Sparse Root Zone Mount Points

Question

In my zone xml files I have configured filesystems to be mounted in the non global zones.
The filesystems exists on separate SAN storage.
filesystem special=/dev/dsk/controllerdisknumber raw=/dev/dsk/controllerdisknumber directory=/somemountpoint
The problem we are experiencing is that occasionally our path to the SAN goes down. Yes these are multipathed but we still experience the outage.
What happens is that the filesystems that are mounted in the NGZ's go away. So the zone is left running
but the mountpoints are not mounted any longer.
When the path to the SAN comes back, the global zone sees that the devices are back, but the NGZ still
does not mount their filesystems as specified in their specific xml.
The only way for the mount points to come back is to 1) reboot the zone or 2) manually mount the filesystems from the global zone, specifying that they be mounted in the NGZ.
Is this working as it should? Should the zone not attempt to remount its filesystems if they are lost?
Instead of specifying a filesystem in the zoneconfig, should we just be giving the devices to the zone and then use the NGZ /etc/vfstab to mount ?
Thank you for the help.

Answer 1

I've seen this issue also, but not aware of a good fix.
One possibility that comes to mind but I havent actually tested is to do a NFS export from the global zone and automount it in the local zone.
The automounter shoud deal with mountpoint reliability issues OK.
Its kind of ugly and isnt likely to be as efficient as a loopback mount though.