topic Re: Mirroring with Std. VxVM in Operating System - HP-UX

Mirroring with Std. VxVM

Jason Moorhead_2 — Fri, 26 Sep 2003 16:35:35 GMT

After purchasing a new rp5470, with 11.i, I decided to use VxVM to set all the disks up. I absolutely love the slick GUI interface! We have an EMC Clariion attached to it, and we had planned on buying the 'full' VxVM to do multi-pathing (instead of PowerPath). Surprise, EMC does not support this configuration! Guess we're buying PowerPath now. Anyway, my question is this: With the included version of VxVM, can we mirror the root disk? The 2 internal disks need to mirrored, and made bootable, and we cannot buy both PowerPath and the full VxVM (especially since LVM will do the mirror for nothing).

Obviously if standard VxVM cannot mirror a disk, I have to completely reinstall the O/S, and use LVM on the root VG, so I can use Mirror/UX, unless there is a clean "convert VxVM to LVM" procedure, which I have not seen so far.

Thanks!

Re: Mirroring with Std. VxVM

RolandH — Fri, 26 Sep 2003 16:56:13 GMT

Hi Jason,

yes the basic version can do mirorring.

The the attached document and you have it in black and white.

HTH
Roland

Re: Mirroring with Std. VxVM

RolandH — Fri, 26 Sep 2003 16:58:12 GMT

One correction - The basic VxVM can only miroor root discs. For further mirrors you need the full license.

HTH
Roland

Re: Mirroring with Std. VxVM

Steven E. Protter — Fri, 26 Sep 2003 17:20:40 GMT

Mirroring the root disk is an enormous advantage over lvm, which doesn't allow that in the basic package.

Possibly a reason to migrate to it.

SEP

Re: Mirroring with Std. VxVM

RolandH — Fri, 26 Sep 2003 17:39:45 GMT

One more hint.

Compare the costs for LVM with Mirrot/UX and perhaps OnlineJFS and a full license to VxVM.
Ask your HP sales man!!!

Roland

Re: Mirroring with Std. VxVM

Jason Moorhead_2 — Mon, 29 Sep 2003 07:25:06 GMT

Thanks, Roland, for the pdf file... just what I wanted to see!

Re: Mirroring with Std. VxVM

Dmitry G. Spitsyn — Mon, 29 Sep 2003 08:39:41 GMT

Hello, Jason !

Let's a primary disk is /dev/rdsk/c0t6d0 and a mirror disk is /dev/rdsk/c0t3d0.

pvcreate -B -f /dev/rdsk/c0t3d0
vgextend vg00 /dev/dsk/c0t3d0
mkboot /dev/rdsk/c0t3d0 # to create a Boot area
mkboot -a "hpux -lq" /dev/rdsk/c0t3d0 #to create an AUTO file (to bring it up without a quorum)
mkboot -a "hpux -lq" /dev/rdsk/c0t6d0
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol1 # a mirror for /stand
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol2 # a mirrot for primary swap
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol3 # a mirror for /
lvlnboot -R /dev/vg00 # links update
shutdown -ry 0

Then crest your fingers!

BR,
Dmitry

Re: Mirroring with Std. VxVM

Alzhy — Mon, 29 Sep 2003 11:41:45 GMT

Base VxVM supports rotability and Mirroring (for FREE) only on the rootDG diskgroup. I have not tested yet if adding more than 2 disks on rootDG and enabling mirroring on the disks other than the 1st two (but on rootDG) will work -- I suppose it will as rootDG is the key here...

So if you have PowerPath and RAID on the EMC, you do not need full VxVM (DMP, etc...). Like us... we have EVA 5000 and we have SecurePath so we just need the basic VxVM to carve the LUNs... a little issue though .. one needs to have an rc script to enable VxVM DG's on the EVA since SecurePath comes in late...

See my earlier post:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/parseCurl.do?CURL=%2Fcm%2FQuestionAnswer%2F1%2C%2C0x444835e89b424749b49be95296e7a0b4%2C00.html&admit=716493758+1064853494062+28353475