What is the best way to migrate XP24000 to XP12000?

[Zeno Jegam]

Dear Friends,

I want to migrate XP24K into XP12K in HPUX V11.2. Could you please suggest me the best way for this migration? We are analysing in rsync and TDMF. Please suggest the best tool for migrating the data with less downtime.

[Bill Hassell]

It's not easy to suggest a good method since you did not specify how much data is involved. For a few megabytes, cp -rp will work just fine. If the all the files are less than 2 GB, then a find|cpio pipe will be OK for a few gigabytes. rsync is probably the best choice for online copying -- be sure to use a new version so it won't run into the 2 GB limit for files. rsync is ideal as it run extremely fast after the initial pass. It can sync terabytes of data in a few minutes once the changes between the two arrays are minimal.

If your filesystems are measure in hundreds of GB then you might consider dd. In fact, if any of your lvols are used as raw data volumes (ie, Sybase, Informix, sometimes Oracle) then dd is the only HP-UX way. Be sure to use bs=2048k or the copying may take several days.

dd will be the closest in speed to an XP-to-XP copy (which is the fastest method) but this will require a good SAN administrator. In all cases, "less downtime" is totally dependent on how much active data you have. Terabytes of data will not be completed in a two hour maintenance window.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

In order of fun,

1) XP array utilities if available.
2) dd
3) rsync (which won't work on databases like Oracle0.

To really answer you question, you need to at least define what kind of data we're talking about.

The most effective method involves shutting down all services and copying the data cold to the new array.

There will still be issues with mount points in /etc/fstab

SEP