topic Re: rx2660 - raid 6 in Integrity Servers

rx2660 - raid 6

antonio elder prado — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 01:21:42 GMT

Hi,

can you take a look at this:

i have received a rx2660 machine with hpux 11.31. I have added one disk to the vg00, so out of 8 disks (150G each) i am using 2.
can you please tell me:

a) with the running OS on the two disks, can i have a raid 6 on this machine (so i will have redundancy to two disks), would i need to reinstall the OS if i want the raid 6?. Do you know if raid is hardware or software, or should i use mirror-UX with the same benefits (I believe mirrorUX would much easier).

b) i will install a fibercard in this machine and will connect to a san (it is just to plug it in and reboot, correct?) . We just bought VSE and will be creating VMs but it will be out of the san via fiber card, do you think this is a good idea, and is it at least feasible ?

c) i read some place that the MAXIMUM number of VMS i can have using the VSE is 4, is this the number of monitored centers or the real number of the VMs? Basically, i need to make sure i can have many VMs (i understand that i will be limited by the RAM and by the storage).

d) on the SAN i will create a bulk disk storage and will be using as i need for the VMs.

thank you,
./antonio/.

Re: rx2660 - raid 6

Kapil Jha — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 02:20:54 GMT

a)
>>>http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/singleLevel6-c.html

you would left with 6 disks and for raid6 you need minimum of 4 disks you can go ahead with raid6, and you don't need to reinstall the OS just use mirror for OS disk and Raid6 for other.
Raid6 I suppose a hardware raid , and Yes I believe Mirror UX is better.

b)
>>>Using VM with fiber is very well possible,

c)
>>>U can not make vPar on rx2660 not supported, yeh HPVM can help you out and yes number of VM depends upon memory and CPU.
Maximum VM per HOST is 254, depend upon resources.

BR,
Kapil+

Re: rx2660 - raid 6

Torsten. — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 02:59:42 GMT

You need a smartarray P400 controller to create such RAID, do you have one installed?

# ioscan -fn

will tell you.

Re: rx2660 - raid 6

antonio elder prado — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:16:31 GMT

Hi Kapil,

you mentioned that i cannnot use vpar, is vpar the subproduct of vse on hpux ?
for me to get the hpvms working do i need the vse ?

thank you,
./antonio/.

Re: rx2660 - raid 6

antonio elder prado — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:21:23 GMT

Hi Torsten,

I do not see any p400 from the ioscan:

ioscan -fn | grep -i p400
#

so, the only solution will be for me to mirror the two disks (or three in case i need an extra) using mirorUx

- get the vg00
- get the PVs of the vg00 - for example
/dev/disk/disk8 and /dev/disk/disk9 and
mirror each one individual .

thank you,
./antonio/.

Re: rx2660 - raid 6

rick jones — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 23:43:12 GMT

Just to be 100% certain you might want to walk through the entire output of ioscan -fk. By default the rx2660 comes with a "plain" SAS controller that can do RAID1 on some discs, to get more RAID options requires the add-on p400 card. You have to make sure you order the p400 kit for the rx2660 - the kit includes a daughter-card required to "activate" the low-profile PCIe slot on the motherboard into which the p400 is inserted.

Re: rx2660 - raid 6

Kapil Jha — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 05:23:20 GMT

yes vpar is a product from VSE but it need a cell based server and your server is very small to support VPAR, but u can always try HPVM.

BR,
Kapil+

Re: rx2660 - raid 6

antonio elder prado — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:42:40 GMT

Hi Rick and Kapil,

okay, without getting the p4000 i would not be able to get the raid that i would like to have.
So, the other option it would be mirrorUX and mirror the disks into the extra disks, is this correct ?

will be something like:
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvolXX /dev/disk/newdisk

thank you
./antonio/.

Re: rx2660 - raid 6

Torsten. — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:16:06 GMT

P4000 is another product than P400 - don't mix up.

For mirroring boot drives see

http://docs.hp.com/en/5991-1236/When_Good_Disks_Go_Bad_WP.pdf

(Appendix)