Backup & Restore of LDOM Configurations

LDOMs configuration lives in the control domain and on disk. You should regularly backup both domain configuration and guest storage so you can rebuild or move environments when required.

What to backup?

Domain config

Names of domains, CPU/memory allocations, vdisk/vnet mappings (ldm list-bindings).

Domain data

Actual OS and application data disks on ZFS or LUNs.

Best practice

Regularly export domain bindings.
Use ZFS snapshots or backups for each domain root and data filesystems.
Store LDOM config backups with your system documentation.

Commands and examples

1. Backup all domain bindings to a file

ldm list-bindings -a gives a script-like view that can recreate the setup.

terminal — ldom backup

ldoms-lab

[root@primary ~]# ldm list-bindings -a > /var/backups/ldoms-bindings-20250120.txt

2. Restore configuration on same host

You can feed the binding file back to ldm in a controlled way.

terminal — ldom backup

ldoms-lab

[root@primary ~]# ldm init-system
# or apply specific sections (see Oracle docs for version-specific syntax)

3. Use ZFS snapshots for domain disks

Take ZFS snapshot of domain zvols or datasets before big changes.

terminal — ldom backup

ldoms-lab

# Snapshot domain root volume
[root@primary ~]# zfs snapshot rpool/ldoms/ldg1-root@pre_patch
 
# Rollback if required
[root@primary ~]# zfs rollback rpool/ldoms/ldg1-root@pre_patch