how to configure a autoraid?

[Dagmar Boelen]

We received a new hp-ux system with a autoraid attached to it. How can I configure this autoraid? Can anyone provide me a good manual?

[Pete Randall]

Dagmar,

The point of AutoRAID is not to have to configure it. From the "Managing Systems and Workgroups" manual:


What is AutoRAID?


HP offers a disk array with a patented technology named AutoRAID. AutoRAID hardware and software monitor the use of data on a system to provide the best possible performance by determining the best RAID array level for that specific system.

With a traditional array, the process of configuring the system for optimum performance is time-consuming and error prone. You must perform numerous tasks and then choose between RAID 1 and RAID 5, considering the advantages and tradeoffs of each. You must then do performance tuning and evaluate the impacts across the entire systems environment. The entire process can take anywhere from a few hours to days and even weeks.

With AutoRAID, the data is managed for you so that you do not have to do this kind of extensive configuration. The entire configuration process can be completed within less than a minute and once the array is up and running, it continuously and automatically optimizes its own performance. It chooses the appropriate RAID level for you, either RAID 1 or RAID 5, to provide the best performance characteristics, depending upon the changing application workloads.

AutoRAID allows data from different arrays to be managed as a single array. The data within a given array may be a mixture of RAID 1 and RAID 5.

Pros and Cons of AutoRAID

An HP disk array with AutoRAID provides improved performance over traditional RAID systems. It adapts to the system workload by dynamically moving data between multiple arrays with different RAID levels, or within a single array.

Recommended Uses of AutoRAID

Cost and capacity make AutoRAID a good choice in many situations where 50 to 200 GB of storage are required and where you would like the system software to help tune the system for best disk array performance.


HTH



Pete

[Dagmar Boelen]

Hi Pete,

I need a little bit more help on this. The autoraid is already connected to the system. How can I create a filesystem on the autoraid? How can I mount this filesystem?

[Pete Randall]

Hang on Dagmar, I'm pretty rusty on AutoRAID. I'll see if I can find a manual online for you rather than give you bad advice from a faulty memory.


Pete

[Paul Sperry]

Probably the easiest thing to do would be to do this through SAM

Go into SAM
Disks and file systems
Logical volumes
actions
create...

[Steven E. Protter]

ioscan -fnC disk

You should see disks from the autoraid device available.

lvcreate -C n -n testvol
lvextend -L 1024 /dev/vg01 /dev/dsk/c#t#d#

Replace the # signs with a real disk number which you can get from the ioscan or from ll /dev/dsk

newfs -F vxfs /dev/vg01/rtestfol

Creates the filesystem

mkdir /testvol

mount /dev/vg01/testfol /testvol

Its mounted.

Copy an existing entry in /etc/fstab and chagne the first two fields to the mount command above to make it permanent at boot time.

SEP

[Pete Randall]

Dagmar,

Hopefully you can get to this link:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DocumentIndex.jsp?contentType=SupportManual&locale=en_US&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=33733&taskId=115&prodSeriesId=33733&docIndexId=763



Pete

[A. Clay Stephenson]

All of the LVM operations (pvcreate,lvcreate,..) that you are familiar with using physical disks apply then only thing that is different is the creation of Logical Units (LUN's) on the AutoRAID.

You are used to seeing disks like /dev/rdsk/c1t5d0, /dev/dsk/c2t6d0 and the AutoRAID LUN's are just like that except

the SCSI target the 't' part will correspond to the SCSI ID of the AutoRAID controller. The 'd' part will be the LUN number.

Let's suppose that your primary controller (X) is SCSI ID 0 and the Y controller is set to SCSI ID 1. Now let's address LUN4:

/dev/dsk/c1t0d4 (primary) /dev/dsk/c2t1d4 (alternate). This assumes that your AutoRAID controllers are on different host SCSI buses (c1 & c2) but note that there are two paths to the SAME LUN.

The commands you need to study are arraydsp,arraycfg, and arraymgr. Man each one.

Typically,
use arraydsp -i to get the SerialNumber of the array and then
arraydsp -a SerialNumber to display any LUN's, controller settings, etc.

You can then create a new LUN using arraycfg.

From that point, you do an ioscan -f, an insf to create the new device nodes, and then start with the pvcreate commands.

[Trevor Roddam_1]

There is some SW that will be on the application CDs to install and run as the management tool for the 12H. This can be done though SAM once all the patches are installed as well.

Admin Guide
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/lpg28365/lpg28365.pdf

User Guide
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/lpg28364/lpg28364.pdf

Admin Guide HP Part Number C5445-90902
User guide HP Part Number C5445-90901

Hope this helps.

Trevor.