vpar recovery from ignite tape

[Stijn V]

We do have an Ignite server and we create weekly ignite images, we create ignite tapes as well.

However, at our DR site, we only would get a vpar and LTO tape drive. but can I restore the Ignite tape onto a vpar directly (I thought that a vpar is only bootable via an Ignite Server).

Thanks for your help.

[John Waller]

Hi

I believe this will depend on the hardware and the setup of the DR box. For install you can share the DVD drive to the virtual partitions and control the mount and eject from the master server, but I think that when we looked at this, we had an issue with making the Tape Drive available to the Virtual Partition. It was OK with more than one tape drive on the system, but I don't think a single tape drive was sharable, but I'm sure sombody on here can confirm or deny this.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Tape drives are not sharable generally. I've seen some ability to do this may be engineered into serviceguard but you need an OS before you can use that product.

They will have to be moved around, npar to npar, cell to cell in order to be used for Ignite restores.

SEP

[Stijn V]

And if they connect the LTO tape drive to the vpar itself (dedicated).

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

Shalom,

Well you still need to make the DR site somewhat like reality to have it work. That means a compatible tape drive.

Beyond that the procedure depends on the OS involved.

PA-RISC
Boot, intervene when prompted on console

sea
(search for boot devices)
bo P5
(tape drives show up as sequential

Itanium
Intervene at the keystroke to EFI interface. Then use the menus to find a bootable tape drive.


http://docs.hp.com/en/5991-7970/5991-7970.pdf

Recent Versions of Ignite do support tape boot on Itanium systems. There may be some hardware that does not support this. I've personally done it in HP's laps on an rx3660 system.

SEP

[Court Campbell]

My experience with DR and vpars at HP's DR site has been that they usually end up restoring the ignite to an npar instead of a vpar. When I asked the HP tech, he said it takes less time to setup. I am not sure if you use HP for DR, butthey will more than likely restore to a vpar. Also, HP would usually do the restore for you. Granted you may be using another provider for DR, but you could look at restoring to an npar in that case.

[Stijn V]

I restored several systems in the past using Ignite tapes, but it was always an individual server or an npar.

I did setup once a vpar, but I think that you even need an Ignite server to install the vpar (boot lan IP_address_Ignite_server).

I was just wondering if a vpar can be installed (recovered) from a tape drive. Can you assign a tape drive to a vpar when creating it (vparcreate) and boot from that tape drive?

[Tim Nelson]

Look at this doc. Specifically the section labeled "Installing within vPars"

http://docs.hp.com/en/5760/vPars_DVD_TAPE_NET_Usage_V2.pdf

[Tim Nelson]

With newer versions a TAPE io path may be defined as a boot device for a vPar.

The device must be assigned to the vPar then use vparboot the vPar to be recovered from the other vPar using the tape device as the boot path.

[Roland Piette]

Hi Stijn,

To boot a vpar with tape is possible depending the version of vPar product and box you have.

See this following document at thislink :
http://docs.hp.com/en/5760/vPars_DVD_TAPE_NET_Usage_V2.pdf

If you have a PA-Risc box and the version of vPAR is A.03.03 or higher you need to modifiy the partition with the vparmodify command see paragraph of this document IV.B.1.(b).

If you have a box with IA processor, you need to boot on tape at EFI level as a vPAR and repeat the operation for each vPAR on this box.

I hope it helps
Roland