how to configure autoraid 12h in hpux

[Danny Pogi]

hi guys,

i would like to know how to setup(step by step) an autoraid 12h on hpux...

here's the list of what i have and i want to start from scratch:

-d-class server
-hpux 10.20 installer
-autoraid 12h
-5 x 4.3GB HDD

here's what i've done so far

- i cascaded X and Y
- the storage is connected to the server through X,
am only utilizing power supply P1.
- all 5 disks are in "A"

what i want is to configure 4 hard disks in raid 5 having the 5th disk as spare.

what will i do first?

thanks in advance.

regards,
danny

[S.K. Chan]

Check this thread which I've given the answer. In your case you would probably have a little over 13GB of available space for you to configure because some of the disk space will be automatically used as hot spare (unless you disable it) and redundancy.
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/0,,0xdc7842308663d611abdb0090277a778c,00.html

[Danny Pogi]

Hi S.K. Chan,

your reply from the thread seems to assume that i have OS installed...would it be fine if i still dont have my OS installed or is it imposible to do it?

since this will just serve as a test server and i dont have internal disks to serve as root vg...i'm thinking if it is possible to install my OS in the disk array 12h as well...if yes..HOW? thanks.

danny

[S.K. Chan]

When you meant from scratch, you really meant from scratch :) .. my apology. I did not read your question completely. Well, I've never done a fresh/cold install on an unconfigured 12H before so I can't really confirm if it will work or not. What I do know is (this is what I've done before) it supports OS boot up because I've mirrored my root disk before on a 12H but later took it out because I found out that the performance of 12H (the rest of the LUNs) suffers from having a root disk in it. Since then I've never put my root drive on a 12H. If you have no other option, what you can do is experiment with it. On a 12H the is a control panel on the box itself that allows you to configure your LUNs. I have never done this (play around with the control panel) but I think it should be relatively easy. Once you've setup your LUNs proceed with installation of the OS, at some point it'll display all the disks that are available and depending on how many LUNs you've setup and what's their id, you should be able to pick one for the install process.

[Danny Pogi]

from the panel of the disk array i've specified two LUN's
lun1 and lun2 (but i've not examined if i disabled the option for hot spare)...anyway, afterwhich i've tried to install the OS from one of the LUN's... lun2=3GB and lun1=10GB...installation is now in progress :-)...i haven't seen the system asked me what raid level do i want though.

by the way, the system detects 2 pairs of device files.

question: how will i know what my raid level is?

and how to view the status of my array to know how much disk space i still have? and how much is utilized?

thanks.

danny

[S.K. Chan]

Cool! Well you got to remember that you have an AutoRAID hence all the RAID level decision is made for you by the 12H box itself, there is no way for you to tell or force what RAID level you wanted. The rules for this box are if you configure less than 50% of your disk space, then it'll run at RAID 1/0, if you configure more than 50% it'll run at RAID 5. This is automatic. So it's a question of whether you want better performance (at 1/0) or more disk space (at 5). As for detecting 2 pairs of device files it's normal because you got 2 internal bus in the 12H, meaning a LUN can be reference via 2 different paths. To look at the status of your disk array.
# arraydsp -i
==> Take note of the array serial number or id, you'll need it in he subsequent command. Assuming the id is 0000001244DD.
# arraydsp -a 0000001244DD |more
or you can redirect that to a file.

[Eugeny Brychkov]

Danny, please do not forget that to achieve best perfomance and availability you can connect controller X to one HBA and controller Y to another HBA in the server - this way you may have option to 'load balance' between controllers (setting up different primary paths for LUNs) and have redundancy. In addition, please note that if you will not connect all power supplies in the autoraid to power source you may a) loss power redundancy and b) receive warnings on the front panel and hparray logs
You can not have one dedicated disk mech for active hot spare - this is virtual hot spare distributed across all the disks. Actually it is the space reserved to rebuild data in case any disk will fail. You can disable active hot spare - then you'll get more space for LUNs to create, but in case disk will fail autoraid may not rebuild but will reconstruct data using RAID and wait for disk replacement.
Eugeny

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

use SAM.
under disk and filesystem select the autoraid. In Actions you can perform maintenance, but you can't be specific about the autoraid raid level. It is Automatically managed.

In worst case scenario the data will be 10% R1/0 and 90% R5.

Later,
Bill

[Danny Pogi]

one last question before i close this thread.........

i already have my OS installed in the array..i also have my oracle rdbms installed and db created...the system seems to run perfectly fine...but i am receiving a warning that prompts to the screen and say something like...

" Cannot get information from array..." coming from the array daemon. Would there still be something wrong? Also, i cannot execute the arraydsp, arraycfg commands.

[S.K. Chan]

It sounds like the arraymond process is not talking to the ARMServer process. Check if ARMserver is running ..
# ps -ef|grep ARM
There shoud be a process /opt/hparray/bin/ARMserver running. Also check if "arraymond" is running.
# ps -ef|grep array