topic Re: Newbie Help! in Operating System - HP-UX

Newbie Help!

Alan Garner — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 14:58:02 GMT

Hello,

Virgin poster here looking for some insite. I have read a lot of the forum postings here regarding mirroring but I am not sure if/how they apply to me. Having said that...Here is my setup:

From factory: Integrity rx3600 running HP-UX v2 with 4 SAS drives, 2 in a RAID 1 mirror and 2 standalones. The root vg is on one of the standalones (why I don't know).

I have since upgraded to v3 and installed 4 additional drives for a total of 8.

Question 1: How do I "move" the vg00 onto the RAID 1 mirror set? I thought about mirroring that disk to another disk but I can't figure out how to talk to the RAID controller to do it!

Question 2: This machine is going to be running Oracle...how should I best allocate the remaining 6 drives. I am inclined to create a second vg with 3 pvs and mirror that accross the other 3 through software but...that's debateable!

What are your thoughts? Thanks in advance for you replys.

Alan

Re: Newbie Help!

Tim Nelson — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 15:34:53 GMT

Some options.
I have yet to see the SAS drives in the newer servers with the built in RAID controller as a configuration ( I am assuming this as it is not a typical configuration, maybe it is new )so I am sure there are some more options as well.

Safest:
Create ignite image and reinstall OS to new mirrored disks.

Do-able:
Even if you can control the raid controller and mirror the existing drives to new ones, I would then assume you would want to remove the old ones. You will then need to update the boot handler to boot off the new HW address

New:
Dynamic Root Disk in 11iv3 may be of interest. I have yet to look into this yet.

Re: Newbie Help!

MHudec — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 05:48:20 GMT

Also check if sas drives are on the same controller, if yes, then you would have nice single point of failure.

Re: Newbie Help!

Alan Garner — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 06:59:27 GMT

Thanks. I only have 1 system so unless you can ignite a system to itself, that option won't do me any good. I am looking into Dynamic Root Disks as mentioned...at first glance it may work. All the drives are on a single PCI-X Card but split among its two controllers. It would be a whole lot simpler if I could talk to the RAID controller like I can in the Proliants...maybe I will just break down and call HP.

Re: Newbie Help!

Torsten. — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 07:08:13 GMT

According to the manual you can migrate a "plain" disk to a integrated RAID, see

http://docs.hp.com/en/J6369-90045/ch03s03.html#caciegcc

Re: Newbie Help!

Alan Garner — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 08:42:39 GMT

Thank you. Finally got into the RAID controller!!! However, can't create new mirror with my existing disk because it says I have no avalible space at the end of my disk. I am assuming that it refers to RAW space as it is a 146 GB drive with just the OS and swap on it. No actual data is present yet.

Oh well, I guess I'll wait til tomorrow to see if anyone else wants to chime in then make my descision as whether or not to leave it or re-install.

Re: Newbie Help!

Alan Garner — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 09:26:44 GMT

Tried a PVMOVE from advice from another thread.. Totally screwed it up. Had to cold install...no big deal since it was just a test box.