topic Re: Mirroring between ordinary array and raid in Operating System - HP-UX

Mirroring between ordinary array and raid

MarkSyder — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 04:36:46 GMT

Hi everybody.

I currently have an SC10 disc array with mirrored discs in it. I have just inherited a raid array with a similar number of discs in it. I am aware that the SC10 array and the raid array use different technologies but I am wondering if the two could be put on the same server and mirroring done between them. This way if either the ordinary array or the raid array went down the users would be able to carry on working.

Anyone any experience/knowledge of this setup and if it will work?

Mark Syder (like the drink but spelt different)

Re: Mirroring between ordinary array and raid

Steve Lewis — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 05:01:37 GMT

Yes. That is what people do in MC/SG Campus clusters.

Beware LVM limits such as:
Maximum PVs per VG.
Maximum PEs per PV.
You new array would have to be configured with Luns of a similar size to the existing array/disks.

How are your SC10s mirrored? Do you already use LVM for this or do you have an FC60? If you use LVM already, then you extend to a second mirror using
lvextend -m 2 ...

Or are you using VXVM for everything and not LVM at all?

Re: Mirroring between ordinary array and raid

MarkSyder — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 05:13:51 GMT

Thanks Steve.

Yes, we are using LVM.

I'll award points later, just in case anyone else has anything useful to add. If people see a bunny now, they may not bother to read the thread.

Mark

Re: Mirroring between ordinary array and raid

Prasanth B — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 05:49:49 GMT

Hi,

The difference in technology is not a criteria for mirroring at all. The only thing I would like to point out is the performance. You will only be able to get the least out of the two.

-PB

Re: Mirroring between ordinary array and raid

Jaime Bolanos Rojas. — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 06:21:50 GMT

Mark,

I do think it's possible and have seen people doing it in the past, one extra step that I would take is call the HP storage team, and specify them the model of those two units, sometimes they need a special hardware card or cable to work together.

Regards,

Jaime.

Re: Mirroring between ordinary array and raid

Luk Vandenbussche — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 06:47:37 GMT

Mark,

To give a real world example.

We have two EVA3000 on two locations on our plant (DRP issues) with HP9000 servers connected.
On both EVA we have VRAID5 vdisk configured.
The vdisk are synchronised by the HPUX hosts with mirror/UX