topic Re: mirror systems in Operating System - HP-UX

mirror systems

Ron Irving — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:33:53 GMT

Hello!!

Our current environment consists if a production server, (rp8420 11.23,) and a DR server offsite, (rp8420 11.23.) As of now, we replicate the database via the application's shadow procedure, but have to keep up on the OS manually, (copy /home, /etc/passwd, etc.)

My question, is there a cost-effective solution to mirror the OS to the DR site?

If you need anymore information, please ask.

Thank you!!!

Re: mirror systems

Pete Randall — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:39:12 GMT

Ron,

I'll be very interested to see what sort of response you get as we have a nearly identical situation. At his point I use cron nightly to keep key OS files in sync, much as you do. I believe this might be a good application for rsync but have never gotten around to trying it.

It would be ideal if we could do remote mirroring! Hmmm, I wonder if Dynamic Root Disk would offer anything - I'll have to look into that but I doubt it.

Good luck,

Pete

Re: mirror systems

Ron Irving — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:51:19 GMT

Thanks Pete. I tried to get an interest in Sevice Guard, but they weren't interested in paying for it. Go figure. We're looking at rsync right now. Can you share your cron scripts? That may be a short-term fix.

Thanx!!

Re: mirror systems

Pete Randall — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:27:06 GMT

Ron,

Any cron scripts are much less elaborate than you may be thinking (actually, I may have misled you a bit). Primarily, I use cron to sync the application files so that program source for our home-grown applications remains the same on both systems. The system files (passwd, hosts, group, PATH, shells, profile, etc.) are always kept in sync manually on all our systems by the administrator making the change - ME. Any changes occur on the production server and the changed file is immediately propagated to all other servers. Simplistic, maybe, but that's the way I set it up years ago and it still seems to work for us.

Pete

Re: mirror systems

Ron Irving — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:32:16 GMT

Thanks Pete. That's what we're planning on doing in the short teerm.

Hey...check me out Pete...only took 9 years, but I got a grad-hat!!!

Re: mirror systems

Steven E. Protter — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:52:10 GMT

Shalom,

Use Ignite make_tape_recovery and/or make_net_recovery to create an image and then restore it at the DR site.

Its cost effective (free) and can with practice even be automated.

SEP

Re: mirror systems

Pete Randall — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:10:43 GMT

And that is one fine hat there, Ron. Clothes do make the man, they say! Enjoy it and keep on working at it - there's more to come.

Pete

No points please

Re: mirror systems

TwoProc — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:28:17 GMT

Ron,

I've not seen any facilities inside of Service Guard that assist in maintaining the OS anyway.

Mainly, I'd be looking at spreadsheets to maintain that patches are applied evenly across systems. As far as configuration files in the OS, there are a few of them I'd not want to change automatically anyways. So, yeah, I think this is hand management for the few items that change, but, most of those, except for patches should be scriptable.

Re: mirror systems

Ron Irving — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:43:25 GMT

Thanks all. I think I have what I need.

A bientot!!!

Ron