topic Re: LVM vs VxVM in Operating System - HP-UX

LVM vs VxVM

Joshua Laden — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:05:06 GMT

Hello all. I'm some what of a novice when it comes to HP-UX. So forgive me if I don't understand some of your suggestions.

I have been tasked to buil some new Oracle DB servers. We purchase 2 rx3600s and 2 rx6600s.

I need to install 11.23 Enterprise, service guard 11.17 and Veritas CFS 4.1. My question is more towards the initial install of the OS.

You have 3 choices at install, the default is LVM, Vertias VxFS VxVM, and I can't remember the third, but I think it's whole disk VxFS.
If I choose Vertias VxFS VxVM, is that the same as installing LVM and the installing VxFS 4.1 after that?

Does anyone have any suggestions or best practices?

Thanks,

Josh

Re: LVM vs VxVM

Pete Randall — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:14:46 GMT

"If I choose Vertias VxFS VxVM, is that the same as installing LVM and the installing VxFS 4.1 after that?"

NO. I think you're confusing VxVM and VxFS. VxFS is the Veritas File System, sometimes know as the Journaled File System. It is generally used because it offers superior fsck startup times over the older HFS file systems. You can have VxFS file systems no matter which volume manager you choose: VxVM or LVM.

Pete

Re: LVM vs VxVM

Alzhy — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:41:22 GMT

"If I choose Vertias VxFS VxVM, is that the same as installing LVM and the installing VxFS 4.1 after that?"

No. It means your OS will be encapsulated and managed by VxVM. Also called "rootability"

Our configs at 11.11 have LVM as still being managed by LVM whilst the rest are all VxVM. The reason was we've already existing tools and processes for the backup and recovery and ignitiion of our OS disks managed by LVM.

But since you will be starting fresh, I suggest you use entirely VxVM. Note though that with even Enterprise OE HPUX - VxVM is not fully licensed so you do not get DMP, ceertain storage layouts, etc. But it should be sufficient for protecting your OS disks and some basic non-OS carving of disks specially if those disks are already protected/RAIDed any way by say PowerPath, SecurePath, etc....

Re: LVM vs VxVM

Joshua Laden — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:53:33 GMT

All,

So, I think I understand. My SAN administrator needs to be able to run vg commands to allocate disk space for all of the oracle instances that will be run on these boxes. So if I understand correctly, I would want to install the OS with the default LVM with VxFS and install the Veritas CFS in order for that to work, right?

Thanks,

josh

Re: LVM vs VxVM

Torsten. — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:59:42 GMT

Hi,

for your initial OS installation it is OK to go for LVM as volume manager and vxfs as the filesystem.
You can take different choices for your data disks/filesystems - ask your dba guys.

Re: LVM vs VxVM

Vasu Viswanadha — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 02:14:28 GMT

Hi,

With VxVM, you can mirror your root volume without LVM Mirror-UX, a priced product.

BR

Vasu

Re: LVM vs VxVM

Joshua Laden — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 08:17:34 GMT

I was able to run the vxdiskadm and option 1 and then option 5. This allows you add and initialize an unused disk and then use it as a mirrored disk.
These are the steps I used, but if this incorrect, can someone please correct me.

Re: LVM vs VxVM

amestak — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 06:42:12 GMT

"Hi, With VxVM, you can mirror your root volume without LVM Mirror-UX, a priced product."

hi every body, i agree with u on this we can mirror root volume without Mirror-UX.
but to do that i have to encapsulate my disk under Vxvm or under LVM

thanks

Re: LVM vs VxVM

Steven E. Protter — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 09:31:10 GMT

Shalom,

I prefer LVM, even if it makes me pay for software mirroring. Thats because of history and I like using the same commands on Linux and HP-UX./

Its a matter of personal perference though.

Note that we have not certified SG 11.17 yet but found SG 11.16 very stable and are using it widely. I'm sure SG 11.17 is good but we're cautious on important software like this.

SEP

Re: LVM vs VxVM

chris huys_4 — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 08:25:53 GMT

Hi Joshua,

I will be a bit biased, because I support vxvm on HP-UX. ;)

Best practice for production systems.

OS/OS applications
Install the OS/ OS applications, f.e. mc/sg on local disks. Use LVM as volumemanager and mirror the OS, with the mirrordisk/UX product over the 2 local disks. The (support) cost of mirrordisk/UX is negligable compared to f.e. the cost of a cfs 4.1 license or a oracle (10g) db license.

Oracle binaries
Create a lun on the diskarray, that can hold the oracle binaries. Volumemanager to manage the lun, would be vxvm.

(if you have redundant diskarrays, create 1 lun on each diskarray and vxvm-mirror the luns between the diskarrays)

Oracle databases
To create a 2node MC/SG 11.17 cfs 4.1 cluster, the luns will have to be managed by vxvm. On top of the vxvm luns, shared cfs filesystems will then need to be created.

Greetz,
Chris