topic Re: root disk partitioning for mirroring in Operating System - HP-UX

root disk partitioning for mirroring

yash123 — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 05:31:53 GMT

Hello all,
A basic question.. requesting to please in detail..
Why in Integrity server root disks are partitioning for mirroring.

Re: root disk partitioning for mirroring

Torsten. — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 05:38:09 GMT

They are NOT partitioned for mirroring.

On a Integrity boot disk are 3 partitioned, 1 for EFI, 1 for HPUX, 1 for Service tools.

You need another disk for mirroring.

Re: root disk partitioning for mirroring

shikhar_1 — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 05:38:56 GMT

Hi,

It is not like that we are partitioning root disk only for mirroring.
For integrity servers we have to keep the root disk in three partitionings like in this manner
The boot disk of IA machine got 3 partition,

s1 - EFI
s2 - OS
s3 - HP support tools

Re: root disk partitioning for mirroring

yash123 — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 05:45:52 GMT

Ok understood...what is logic behind root disk portioning

Re: root disk partitioning for mirroring

Torsten. — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 05:51:19 GMT

The EFI area is FAT32 for the OS loader (common INTEL standard), the HPUX partition is under LVM/OS control.

Re: root disk partitioning for mirroring

Torsten. — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 05:54:21 GMT

Layout:

http://tinyurl.com/68qpars

Re: root disk partitioning for mirroring

yash123 — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 06:00:53 GMT

Thanks
EFI is for OS loader
HPUX - lvm/os
whats the purpose HPSP

Is the partioning is because of intel platform?

thanks once again for my doubts.....get points and enjoy.......

Re: root disk partitioning for mirroring

Torsten. — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 06:02:57 GMT

>> Is the partioning is because of intel platform?

Yes, it's Intel specification (default).

HPSP holds several tools, e.g. offline diagnostics, offline firmware update tools, several EFI tools. etc ...

Re: root disk partitioning for mirroring

Torsten. — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 06:09:01 GMT

This is the link to the offline diagnostic CD image:

https://h20392.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=IPF1103

You can install these tools in HPSP area, but normally you never need it there.

Re: root disk partitioning for mirroring

Torsten. — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 06:15:56 GMT

And finally - if you choose hardware mirroring via the controller, the complete disk (all partitions) will be mirrored - if you use LVM mirroring, only partition 2 will be mirrored, so you need to take care about partition 1 (and maybe 3) yourself.

Re: root disk partitioning for mirroring

yash123 — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 06:28:42 GMT

thanks a lot Torsten for sharing the knoweldge...

I believe it is better to mirror partition 1 and 3. What's your opnion?
How to mirror part 1 & 3? is it possible through lvm mirror.

Re: root disk partitioning for mirroring

Viktor Balogh — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 07:23:02 GMT

> How to mirror part 1 & 3? is it possible through lvm mirror.

No, these are not under LVM control. To mirror these partitions, you can use dd like this:

# dd if=/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1 of=/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s1
# dd if=/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s3 of=/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s3

This will create a verbatim copy of these partitions to your second disk.

Re: root disk partitioning for mirroring

P Arumugavel — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 08:09:32 GMT

Hi,

No need to copy the EFI partion to mirror disk. You copy only the contents of the HPSP partition; that also if the diagnostics have been installed to the original system disk. To see if the diagnostics are installed on the original boot disk; use

# /usr/sbin/efi_ls -d /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s3

If present, copy them with the Viktor Balogh's command.

Note: dd command may fail to copy the HPSP partition if the sizes of both primary HPSP and alternate HPSP partitions are not the same. If dd command fails with I/O error, then the alternate way is to copy them to HPSP partition from Offline Diagnostics and Utilities CD-ROM.

Rgds...

Re: root disk partitioning for mirroring

P Arumugavel — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 08:33:32 GMT

Use the following commands to find the size of EFI, HPUX & HPSP partions on original disk.

EFI:
#/usr/sbin/diskinfo -b /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s1 | awk '{print $1 / (1024)}'

HPUX:
#usr/sbin/diskinfo -b /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s2 | awk '{print $1 / (1024)}'

HPSP:
#usr/sbin/diskinfo -b /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s3 | awk '{print $1 / (1024)}'

Each will give you the value in MB

Rgds...

Re: root disk partitioning for mirroring

Torsten. — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:24:33 GMT

Only a hardware mirror can mirror partition 1 and 3 - LVM cannot.

But there is not really a need to do this.

If the mirroring procedure is correctly done, both disks are bootable.

Just make sure the second disk is listed in

/stand/bootconf

because if a patch is updating the OS loader it will update both disks then.

Don't worry about partition 3 - if you ever need a **current** tool, you need the current CD anyway.