topic Re: Mounting a Remote Disk in Operating System - HP-UX

Mounting a Remote Disk

JeeKay — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 08:42:24 GMT

Hi All,
I am new comer to the UNIX world and would like your valuable assistance. Please advise on the steps I need to follow to make use of free disk space on a second server on my server.Both are HP UX 11.x boxes.I am running out of space on my Prod and cannot have downtime.
Thank you,

Re: Mounting a Remote Disk

spex — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:06:55 GMT

HP-UX 11.23 NFS Services Administrator's Guide:
http://docs.hp.com/en/5991-1154/index.html

Other Documentation:
http://docs.hp.com/en/hpux11iv2.html

PCS

Re: Mounting a Remote Disk

Steven E. Protter — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:16:34 GMT

Shalom,

You can't do anything like extend /var into an nfs mount on another server.

What action to take depends on what filesystem is getting full.

NFS is a good way to use remote space, but some applications won't tolerate running their data on remote filesystems.

SEP

Re: Mounting a Remote Disk

JeeKay — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:32:49 GMT

Thank you for the answers. Its a file system used as part of a database. I need some space to make the backups to. Cause the backups are quite large and should not really matter as long the database can find the location specified. Am i right on that ?

Re: Mounting a Remote Disk

Tim Nelson — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:47:38 GMT

NFS is your only option for "sharing" locally attached disk from one server to another.

Beware that NFS does have a performance overhead as it is TCP based.

Might be a good location for backups / extracts as long as you understand the delays with network based NFS mounts. Not an option for actual DB files as the delays would most likely render the unusable.

Re: Mounting a Remote Disk

Rita C Workman — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:54:05 GMT

...did I miss something....

Your running low on space and you want more disk space to make a backup of your database to this "more" diskspace.

If the disk on the second server is disk that can be 'shared', then fine. If your talking internal disk, then I don't recommend it.

If your intent is to back up your database, as you mention - then why not backup to tape. So much cheaper. If database can't be down, then can it be put into hotbackup mode ?

Or can you give a little more detail on exactly what your disk environment is....is it all internal or is it JBOD, is it an array ? Models types ?

Just thinking out loud,
Rita

Re: Mounting a Remote Disk

JeeKay — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 10:16:44 GMT

Hi ,
We have the old HP 9000 series which even god has forsaken. It has 2 Fiber channels with a maximum support of 73 GB disks.The current situation is that both the channels are full and the only option is to have a new external array which is costing 4000 USD. These servers are to be decommissioned in a few months time so the company is not favouring the upgrade option. I need some space where I can do exports of my DB. Hot Backups to Tape ? Cant even think of it since the tapes are old fashioned ones too...Hope I have given u a clearer picture. I edited the /etc/exports and added /local_mount/dir -access=remote_ip,rw=remote_ip -root=remote_ip. I also went into the nfsconf and made sure that my NFS is running. Now when issuing the mount command i get "Permission Denied". Any ideas ?

Re: Mounting a Remote Disk

Tim Nelson — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 12:10:52 GMT

NFS checklist:

On NFS server
nfs daemons running ?
/etc/exports file configured properly
exportfs -va

On NFS client
NFS client running ?
modify /etc/fstab
create directory
mount

Permission issues typically due to either error in NFS server export file, export file not activated after changes or NFS server daemon not running.

Re: Mounting a Remote Disk

JeeKay — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 13:53:09 GMT

Thank you all. I managed to get it done. It was my exports file. Can you advice if I mount a large HDD on the other server and want to use it to do a cold backup of my DB what params should i provide when i mount it ? This would be highly appreciated. Thank you again for the wonderful HELP that you are providing.

Re: Mounting a Remote Disk

Prasanth V Aravind — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 23:41:44 GMT

you can check the exported file systems with showmount -e command form nfs server .