topic Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive in Operating System - HP-UX

Mirroring itanium boot drive

Timothy P. Jackson — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:13:34 GMT

I have a new itanium and have installed HP-UX 11i Version 3. I am looking for instructions on how to mirror the boot drive. Obviously it is different then HP-UX 11i Version 1

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Tim

Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive

James R. Ferguson — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:17:55 GMT

Hi Tim:

You very well may have a Smart Array controller and hence a hardware RAID mirror.

You might want to see what is returned by:

# ioscan -kfnC disk

# sasmgr get_info -D /dev/sasd0 -q raid

An invaluable document, otherwise is this (which also discusses the differences between mirroring vg00 on PA-RISC and Itanium:

http://docs.hp.com/en/5991-1236/When_Good_Disks_Go_Bad_WP.pdf

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive

Michael Steele_2 — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:18:31 GMT

"(* EFI *)
diskinfo c2t0d0s1,2,3 "
"vi /tmp/partitionfile
11.23
2
EFI 100 MB
HPUX 100%

> 11.23
3
EFI 500 MB
HPUX 100% -or- xxxxmb
HPSP 400mb"
idisk -wf /tmp/partitionfile disk
idisk -p disk
insf -e
pvcreate -B disk,s2
mkboot -e -l disk
vgextend vg00 disk,s2
lvextend -m 1 lvol1 disk,s2 (* and all other lvols *)
lvlnboot -r -b -s -s (* lvol3,1,2,2 *)
efi_ls -d rdsk/disk,s1
"efi_cp -d rdsk/primary_disk,s1 -u /EFI/HPUX/AUTO /tmp/AUTO
(* copy AUTO file from pri to /tmp/AUTO *)"
"efi_cp -d rdsk/alterna_disk,s1 -u /EFI/HPUX/AUTO /tmp/AUTO
(* copy AUTO file from pri to /tmp/AUTO *)"
reboot

Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive

Michael Steele_2 — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:23:52 GMT

page 26

Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive

Torsten. — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:48:27 GMT

If the system supports this, do yourself a favour and create a hardware RAID - this is possible with most current servers. Please tell what model you have.

Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive

Raj D. — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:52:42 GMT

Timothy,

I use a small script and it helps to mirror the root disk quickly,
You can try this small program, (mirror.v3_hp-ux_11.31 ) , cereful while specifying the source and target,

Inside you have to change Target (the new disk to be mirrored), and Source (The existing boot disk).

#---------------------
TARGET_DSK="diskXX"
SOURCE_DSK="diskYY"
#---------------------

Cheers,
Raj.

Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive

Torsten. — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:56:54 GMT

Just to add this - it could be really painful to replace a SAS disk in a LVM mirror - avoid this if possible!

Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive

James R. Ferguson — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:01:38 GMT

Hi (again):

Posting a PDF file that was stored off 3-years ago when a current version is freely available on the HP web makes little sense to me.

...JRF...

Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive

Torsten. — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:54:03 GMT

I did not read all the attachments here, but I know the procedures for mirroring in 11.23 and 11.31 are slightly different.

http://docs.hp.com/en/5992-6576/ch03s04.html#cbddaicd

Tim, what server model do you have?

Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive

Timothy P. Jackson — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:00:15 GMT

The "model" command returns the following

ia64 hp server rx3600

Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive

Torsten. — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:05:47 GMT

The rx3600 has either the built-in SAS controller (always) or an optional smartarray RAID controller.

With the built-in you can configure a mirrored pair of disks for boot disk. Unfortunately you cannot migrate online, but you need to take a backup and restore (or mirror to a third drive).

I would take an ignite backup, configure the hardware RAID and restore the image. This take less than 1 hour.

It will be a complicated procedure to replace a SAS disk in a LVM mirror configuration, believe this. If you reboot the server with a dead disk, it will get more complicated.

So take the hardware mirror option.

If you have questions, please ask.

Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive

Timothy P. Jackson — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:13:38 GMT

So it would be better to use hardware mirroring for the boot drives and then use normal MirrorDisk-UX for the rest of the drives?

I have never done hardware mirroring, is there a document for doing this or do you have a proceedure I could use?

Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive

Torsten. — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:18:03 GMT

The built-in controller can do hardware mirror for 2 pairs of disks only.

The procedure is quite easy and mentioned on http://docs.hp.com -> server hardware -> your server -> built-in sas controller.

While building the RAID all data will get lost!

Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive

Torsten. — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:21:55 GMT

The guide:

http://docs.hp.com/en/5900-0112/index.html

Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive

Michael Steele_2 — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:28:04 GMT

Hi

In case of new generation of Integrity systems, there are SAS HBAs and SAS Smart arrays HBAs with specific RAID levels are being offered and their use is depends on the OS platform to be used on them. You can see what RAID controller installed on the server when you power on the server and system f/w detects it.

Take a look at the specs of then new servers.
http://h20341.www2.hp.com/integrity/cache/331424-0-0-225-121.html

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/downloads/4AA0-6159ENW.pdf

To configure the Integrated Mirror is you use EFI utilities as mentioned at
http://docs.hp.com/en/AB464-9001B/ch09s02.html#babhihch

You can manage SAS storage using "sasmgr" utility as mentioned at
http://docs.hp.com/en/J6369-90045/ch04s02.html

Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive

Torsten. — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:36:17 GMT

Michael, you should update your bookmarks. Most links result in a "Document removed from the site". It lists the new link if your link is the predecessor, otherwise it will give an error only. I know, this is somehow ***@!"Q!*** ...

Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive

Michael Steele_2 — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:43:23 GMT

Geez, sorry, I just copied and pasted.

Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive

Torsten. — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:46:57 GMT

I know, I do the same from my repository usually. Unfortunately the links will change if the documents are updated. So I usually have a lot of dead links only.

:-(

Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive

Raj D. — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:55:28 GMT

Tim,
Also it would be a good idea to *remove* the (Hardware raid) integrated mirror volume . And configured softwre raid using LVM mirroring from OS and it works fine like a normal server. And all the disk space will be available.
If there are 8 disk on the 3600 , you can assign 2 disk for vg00 mirroring , remaining 6 disk can be used for other purpose completely.

* check out the document to remove Integrated mirror volume (Hardware raid):
[ Adding viewing deleting SAS raid controller -.doc atached ]

* To note: system needs to be rebooted, all the data on the disks will be erased .
* This is useful for new installations or during a fresh os installation .

Cheers,
Raj.

Re: Mirroring itanium boot drive

Torsten. — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:02:03 GMT

@Raj D.:

I'm trying to give arguments why hardware RAID is better than LVM mirror with this system (I can tell you why, if you want), but why do you suggest the opposite now???