topic Re: Adding 2 more DISK drivers in Operating System - HP-UX

Adding 2 more DISK drivers

Yaroki — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 12:01:40 GMT

Hello,

On HP-UX, B.11.11 I'm using 2 disks as follow:

1. Holds the OS (B.11.11)

2. Holds the application (LVM - the whole disk is 1 LV)

In order to create backup for both disks I would like to add 2 more disks to the array.

Then, run on each one of them backup with the following command:

# dd if=/dev/rdsk/cXtYdZ of=/dev/rdsk/cXtYdZ

My questions are:

1. After attaching/adding the the disks to the drivers, do I need to use any command to connect them to the system?

2. Does the command above correct? Will it create appropriate backup?

3. I am planning to insert the command to the crontab. Is it fine?

BR,

Yali

Re: Adding 2 more DISK drivers

Patrick Wallek — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:58:20 GMT

1) After adding drives you should do an 'ioscan -fnC disk' to verify that the new disks are visible to the system. You may also need to do an 'insf -C disk' to create device files for the new drives.

2) Your 'dd' command will create a backup. Whether it is appropriate or not is entirely up to you. To make the backup run a bit faster I would add a 'bs=1024k' so you will read/write in 1 MB blocks.

3) You could add that to crontab, yes.

Now, my personal opinion is that there are better ways to do backups.

Here is what I would try to do in your situation:

1) Keep the 2 new disks. You need these.

2) Try to acquire the MirrorDisk/UX software if you don't already have it. This will allow you to mirror you OS disk to one of the new disks, and also mirror you application disk to the other new disk. As your system stands right now, if one of the disks goes bad you are entirely down. Even if you do your 'dd' backups, your system will be down if a disk goes bad. Mirroring will at least allow you to to continue running if a disk goes bad.

3) Acquire a tape drive for the system. This will allow you to do 2 additional things:

3a) Use Ignite/UX to create a bootable backup tape of VG00. This will allow you to restore if your system gets completedly messed up.

3b) Use fbackup to backup your application LV. This way, you have an easy way to restore data if something happens to the application.

Good luck!

Re: Adding 2 more DISK drivers

Yaroki — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 07:53:20 GMT

Thank you very much for your reply.

I accept your request for mirroring.

> To make the backup run a bit faster I would add a 'bs=1024k' so you will read/write in 1 MB blocks.

Do you mean like this:

# dd if=/dev/rdsk/cXtYdZ of=/dev/cXtYdZ bs=1024k

2) Try to acquire the MirrorDisk/UX software.

I don't have it, so can I download it from HP or other site for free or should I purchase it?

Re: Adding 2 more DISK drivers

Dennis Handly — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 10:21:10 GMT

>Do you mean like this: dd if=/dev/rdsk/cXtYdZ of=/dev/cXtYdZ bs=1024k

Yes but rdsk on both sides.

>2) Try to acquire the MirrorDisk/UX software. should I purchase it?

You have to purchase it.

Re: Adding 2 more DISK drivers

Yaroki — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 10:41:51 GMT

Hello Dennis,

I mean, it is not part of the OS on B.11.11?\

# swlist -l bundle "*mirror*" gives nothing...

I have a contract support with HP for software updates.

Should HP provide it as part of the contract?

Re: Adding 2 more DISK drivers

Dennis Handly — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 12:04:28 GMT

>I mean, it is not part of the OS on B.11.11?

It might be, depending on what OE you have and what OS version.

>swlist -l bundle "*mirror*" gives nothing...

This would only work if "mirror" was in all lower case. Try:

swlist -l bundle | grep -i mirror

>Should HP provide it as part of the contract?

No, you must first purchase it before you get support. See:

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/LVM-and-VxVM/How-to-mirror-a-normal-volumegroup/m-p/5991609

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/System-Administration/HPUX-11i-How-do-I-get-mirroring-software/m-p/4933134