RX4640 mirroring with Open VMS

[Jeff Kargus]

Can a Raid controller be used to mirror two internal OS disks on a RX4640 integrity server and be supported by Open VMS 8.xx

Also, can two internal OS disks be software mirrored and supported by Open VMS 8.xx on a RX4640?

I am Looking for documentation to support either scenario.

Thanks, Jeff

[YAQUB_1]

Hi Jeff,

RX4640 support OpenVMS v8.2 and v8.2-1.

RX4640 Core I/O interconnect Ultra320 SCSI channels; option to upgrade SCSI controller to Smart Array 6402 (except with OpenVMS).

Thanks--Yaqub
HP Support!!!

[Jeff Kargus]

OK. Hardware mirroring is out.

Is software mirroring of the internal system disks supported with Open VMS 8.xx on the RX4640? If so, is there a license the customer requires or is this built into VMS.

[Bill Hall]

Jeff,

Yaqub is incorrect. The Quickspecs for the rx4640 and OpenVMS v8.3 both state support for the Smart Array 6402. Initial support was added to VMS v8.2-1 with limited host management of the 6402. I personally installed a 6402 in an rx1620 after upgrading VMS to v8.2-1 on the server. The 6402 provides a mirrored system (boot) disk in that server to this day.

By the way, host based disk mirroring is also available as an option. The official product name is "HP Volume Shadowing for OpenVMS". The shadowing driver is deeply integrated in the VMS OS. You only need the license and SYSGEN settings to turn it on.

VMS shadow sets can have one, two or three members. The members can be locally attached disks, shared scsi array luns or shared fibre channel array luns or any combination of supported devices. The members do not have to be the same size, allowing you to migrate data to larger disks while the disk/luns are online and available to your users. A single shadow set member may be removed from the shadow set for a type of "snap shot" backup. Shadowing is also commonly used in distributed disaster tolerant OpenVMS Clusters.

Bill