RP2470 test environment

[Jiří Jurek]

Our customer has a HA cluster of 2 RP2470 servers in production. He requires software upgrade of OS, middleware(Oracle DBMS) and application software. Since it is production environment, which can be offline only overnight, i want to purchase identical hardware(which is available as refurbished under $5000) for testing. Then i want to make offline copy of all disks and run copy on test HW. After upgrade I want swap all disks from test HW to production.
Is it possible to do it this way?
What about licencing issues?
Would you suggest another solution?
Server software:
HP-UX 11.11
Enterprise Cluster Master Toolkit
HP Cluster Object Manager
ServiceGuard Manager
Base VERITAS Volume Manager Bundle 3.5 for HP-UX
Oracle DBMS 9.02

[Patrick Wallek]

>>software upgrade of OS,

What are you upgrading to? The rp2470 can run 11.23 but it can NOT run 11.31.

[Jiří Jurek]

Well, I thought 11.31 does support rp2470, thank you for this information.
So there will be no OS upgrade, just Oracle DBMS from 9.2 to 10.2.
But I still need to copy production environment to test one and back. The probles is the production environment, which can be offline only overnight. The best scenario, I can imagine is, that I'll work with 2 sets of disks. One original set and one copy and when something go wrong, i can still go with working original set.
So is it possible to make such copy and have it working on another identical system?

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

Should be OK but the working word is "identical". That means the same exact I/O cards (LAN, disk, fibre) in the same slots and the same external disk hardware.

[Jiří Jurek]

I think a can handle minor hardware differencies. What I am afraid of are licence issues e.g. Oracle, Veritas, .. In short, software, which refuses to run, if it finds different serial numbers of cpu/hdd/mb ... If this is not an issue, I thank you for answers and I am closing this thread.