topic Re: Switching Hardware in Operating System - HP-UX

Switching Hardware

Andy Beal — Mon, 24 Mar 2003 18:59:40 GMT

I am inquiring about switching hardware should my main system fail. I have an rp5470 with Dual 8700-875 processors. Assuming I can match everything besides the processor speeds is it possible to just move system and data disks over to another system that is running dual 8700-750 processors? This assumes I have the same RAID and NIC cards in the same hardware slots, and matched memory. The only difference besides the hardware being different would be the processor speed. Is there any sort of system identifier or Serial number to would stop the OS (HP-UX 11i) from booting?

Re: Switching Hardware

Ross Zubritski — Mon, 24 Mar 2003 19:02:44 GMT

No, the OS will boot just fine.

Regards,

RZ

Re: Switching Hardware

Steven E. Protter — Mon, 24 Mar 2003 19:07:51 GMT

You can make an ignite recovery tape:

/opt/ignite/bin/make_tape_recovery -Av -x inc_entire=vg00

You can use that to boot the alternate system. About two hours or so after making the decision, you can have another system up with the same name and IP address.

Then there is merely the concept of moving the data ouside of vg00.

SEP

Re: Switching Hardware

Jeff Schussele — Mon, 24 Mar 2003 19:12:25 GMT

Hi Andy,

No, the OS wouldn't have a problem as long as the 2 ARE identical in config.

But I would caution you that licensed SW may have trouble with the switch. New Host IDs, new MAC addresses - whatever licensing scheme the SW would use would need to be accomodated.

My 2 cents,
Jeff

Re: Switching Hardware

Rita C Workman — Mon, 24 Mar 2003 19:22:09 GMT

May I suggest you look into configuring your hardware accordingly..and look at MC/Service Guard to handle the 'failover'.

Just a thought,
Rita

Re: Switching Hardware

Andy Beal — Mon, 24 Mar 2003 19:39:16 GMT

I'm looking at being back up in about 30-60 minutes, in a cost-effective manner. The only licensed software I'm using is MirrorDisk for my system drives, data disks are hardware mirrored on a 4SI card. If I understand correctly I could put one side of a mirrored set in the other box and reconnect my raid storage enclosure (DS 2300), and things should start up for the most part. I appreciate the Ignite option and the Service guard suggestion, but I was planning using the other system for development/test, the specific service is Oracle 9i, then I'm not sitting there with idle hardware. (Yeah, I know I could use RAC, but that's another 100K for Oracle & Rac licenses). Thanks for the suggestions, points to come.