topic Re: Enabling DMP on HP-UX 11.23 (using VxVM 3.5) in Operating System - HP-UX

Enabling DMP on HP-UX 11.23 (using VxVM 3.5)

Mike Brown_3 — Wed, 03 Nov 2004 08:57:12 GMT

Hi folks,

Can anyone give me a definitive on this one? As far as I can tell, DMP is an additional feature ON TOP of Base VxVM, and therefore requires an additional licence to work. Is this the case in my example above, (because I am aware that VxVM comes as standard with that version of the OS)?
Currently when I run "vxlicrep -e | grep -i dmp", all dmp options list as "disabled". Should they, regardless of the above, or is this symptomatic of having no DMP license?

Re: Enabling DMP on HP-UX 11.23 (using VxVM 3.5)

Patrick OHair — Wed, 03 Nov 2004 09:17:18 GMT

DMP is part of the full version of VxVM and does require the additional license to work. When the additional license is installed it will show up in vxlicrep as HP_VXVM_FULL.

Re: Enabling DMP on HP-UX 11.23 (using VxVM 3.5)

Mike Brown_3 — Wed, 03 Nov 2004 10:24:29 GMT

Hi Patrick,

Thanks for that, just as I'd hoped.
And the fact that I'm seeing;

# vxlicrep -e | grep -i vxvm
VxVM#VERITAS Volume Manager = Enabled
HP_VXVM_FULL = Disabled
VxVM = Enabled
VxVM Base = Disabled

...... I guess backs up what you say.

Re: Enabling DMP on HP-UX 11.23 (using VxVM 3.5)

Ted Buis — Wed, 03 Nov 2004 21:36:31 GMT

My understanding was that the Base VxVM had active-passive (failover similar to pvlinks) DMP and the Full VxVM had active-active DMP.

Re: Enabling DMP on HP-UX 11.23 (using VxVM 3.5)

Mike Brown_3 — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 04:03:07 GMT

Hi Ted,

What you say ties up in a way, but how does that explain the following?

# vxlicrep -e | grep -i dmp
DMP = Disabled
SSA_DMP = Disabled
EMC_DMP = Disabled
DGC_DMP = Disabled
HITACHI_DMP = Disabled
SEAGATE_DMP = Disabled
AUTORAID_DMP = Disabled
SENA_DMP = Disabled
ECCS_DMP = Disabled
STORCOMP_DMP = Disabled
ALL_DMP = Disabled

To me, that suggests any DMP functionality is there (installed), but lying dormant waiting (perhaps) for a license to activate them. Or am I reading that wrong?

Re: Enabling DMP on HP-UX 11.23 (using VxVM 3.5)

Robert-Jan Goossens — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 04:15:42 GMT

Mike,

check this link.

http://tinylink.com/?gQY125EJOM

Administering Dynamic Multipathing (DMP)

Best regards,
Robert-Jan

Re: Enabling DMP on HP-UX 11.23 (using VxVM 3.5)

Catalin Tache_1 — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 07:40:59 GMT

Because of the grep you probably overlook the essential! Look carefully for lines like
Product Name = VERITAS Volume Manager
Key = Invalid, Key EXPIRED 48 days ago

License Type = DEMO
above the section that start with
DMP = Disabled

If you see something like this your demo license has expired and probably you have entered a permanent license.

VxVM keeps track of all licenses, expired or not. If you what to remove the expired license just remove the corresponding file from /etc/vx/licenses/lic

Re: Enabling DMP on HP-UX 11.23 (using VxVM 3.5)

Mike Brown_3 — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 08:52:18 GMT

Robert and Catalin, thanks for taking the time to respond.

Robert - I've been down that route already and, although quite informative, I'm getting contradictory responses, hence my desire for definitive meanings to specific lines of output, such as those I've given above.

Catalin, nice try but I do have a permanent license installed. That's not the issue, I feel, but more a case of what my license is actually giving me.

In my vxlicrep output above, does it mean that all services listed as `disabled` are just that, and that only a FULL license will enable them? - or is that a complete red herring? (I don't think it is)

Re: Enabling DMP on HP-UX 11.23 (using VxVM 3.5)

Alzhy — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 09:07:42 GMT

BTW,

Have everyone noticed that even with the full license of VxVM.. the expiry is set to sometime in 2007?

Is this normal?

Re: Enabling DMP on HP-UX 11.23 (using VxVM 3.5)

Mike Brown_3 — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 09:35:44 GMT

Hi all,

I've now spoken to Veritas themselves on this one. It appears that `vxdctl license` supercedes all. If that says DMP (MP) is enabled, then it is. End of.

Howvever, they couldn't tell me why the features list as `disabled` in spite of the above. Hopefully they'll get back to me and clear that one up because it (to me) is very misleading. Looks like my issue is patch-related - should have guessed!

Nelson - sorry, not noticed that, can't comment further.

Re: Enabling DMP on HP-UX 11.23 (using VxVM 3.5)

Robert-Jan Goossens — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 09:45:25 GMT

Just a thought.

On a 11.11 server you need to enable dmp by adding the vxdmp driver inside the kernel.

or use the vxdiskadm (options 17 and 18)

could you check if you have this driver on your 11.23 server ?

Robert-Jan

Re: Enabling DMP on HP-UX 11.23 (using VxVM 3.5)

Mike Brown_3 — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 09:49:19 GMT

Hi Robert,

Yeah, been there, done that. It was probably there from the original vxinstall. Thanks for your comments though.

Re: Enabling DMP on HP-UX 11.23 (using VxVM 3.5)

Ted Buis — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 15:19:04 GMT

Comparison between Base VERITAS Volume Manager, Full VERITAS Volume Manager, and Full VERITAS Cluster Volume Manager

Base VxVM (B7961AA)
Free with HP-UX 11i and later
Path failover-support, DMP (active-passive)

Full VxVM (B9116AA)
Includes all of the Base VxVM
Load-balancing DMP (active-active)