An in-place upgrade and the culprit is MySQL binary log (we use it for replication).
Starting with MySQL 5.7 (Ubuntu 16.04) the default is sync_binlog=1, which syncs to disk with each write:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/replication-options-binary-log.html#sysvar_sync_binlog
I switched to sync_binlog=0 temporarily, and OPL-update completed in 13 min. compared to 118 min. with sync_binlog=1.
hdparm reports 518.23 MB/sec.
OPL Maintenance
OPL-update takes a very long time
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