Mirror-UX with an EVA3000

[Galen Benson]

Good Day All,

We've got an Production rp3440 running HPUX 11.11 and Mirror-UX attached to an EVA3000 where our Oracle database files reside. I've recently attached an MSA30 to the server via a PCI-X SmartArray 6402 card and have gotten a logical drive configured from it with 1.6GB of storage.

My management has asked me to mirror the logical volumes from the EVA3000 down to the MSA30 and I'm wondering how to go about this. I'm thinking that I should create a vg from the logical drive, create new lv's within the vg, then mirror each of our SAN lv's over to the newly created lv's.

Is this correct? Would I need to have the database quiesed (sp?) when I do this? Would the process force a reboot? I'm not finding much documentation to help with this process.

Thanks in advance for your time.

[Matti_Kurkela]

MirrorDisk/UX works _within_ a single VG, not _between_ two VGs.

You should:
1.) pvcreate the MSA logical drive(s), turning them into LVM physical volumes (PVs).

2.) Then add them to your _existing_ data VG with vgextend.
(I hope your data VG has a large enough MaxPV value so that it can take the new PVs.)

3.) Then use commands like "lvextend -m 1 /dev/vgdata/lvolN /dev/dsk/cXtYdZ" where cXtYdZ is the new MSA PV, to mirror the data to the new MSA.

There is no need to quiesce the database, although the mirroring procedure will obviously be rather heavy on disk I/O (as *everything* is copied) so you should do it at a time when peak performance is not required.

There is no need to reboot at any point. Of course, it might be prudent to reboot anyway, to ensure that your new configuration is reboot-proof.

MK

[Galen Benson]

Thanks Matt, but we don't have a vg specified for the database files or LV's (Sorry, but it looks like I misspoke earlier). In SAM, the EVA3000 disks show up as unused (they're being presented from a dual applicance StoreAge/LSI SVM) and bdf sees them as follows:

/dev/svm/dsk/amsys1_ecss 52428800 5693745 43814121 12% /ecss
/dev/svm/dsk/Amsys1_d15 5242880 4286748 896380 83% /d15
/dev/svm/dsk/Amsys1_d14 12582912 11197086 1299214 90% /d14
/dev/svm/dsk/Amsys1_d13 10485760 8394748 1960328 81% /d13
/dev/svm/dsk/Amsys1_d12 8388608 4877114 3292180 60% /d12
/dev/svm/dsk/Amsys1_d11 4194304 1953339 2100908 48% /d11
/dev/svm/dsk/Amsys1_d10 41943040 7285303 32491793 18% /d10
/dev/svm/dsk/Amsys1_d09 16777216 12969930 3569334 78% /d09
/dev/svm/dsk/Amsys1_d08 10485760 7789526 2527726 76% /d08
/dev/svm/dsk/Amsys1_d07 10485760 7653982 2654799 74% /d07
/dev/svm/dsk/Amsys1_d06 52428800 38745128 12828958 75% /d06
/dev/svm/dsk/Amsys1_d05 10485760 3173657 6855155 32% /d05
/dev/svm/dsk/Amsys1_d04 10485760 6934128 3329717 68% /d04
/dev/svm/dsk/Amsys1_apps 4194304 2861528 1250487 70% /apps

Is it possible to use mirror ux to mirror just these mount points down to our MSA30?

[Matti_Kurkela]

OK, your system obviously has a pretty customized configuration. /dev/svm/dsk??? It does look almost-but-not-quite like VxVM (VERITAS Volume Manager, an optional extra for HP-UX).

For VxVM (as it's normally found in HP-UX 11.11), the standard pathname would be something like /dev/vx/dsk/. If you're lucky, it is just regular VxVM with some custom naming thrown in. Perhaps a previous sysadmin wished to standardize naming across multiple platforms?

Do the commands

ll -d /dev/svm
ll /dev/svm/dsk

reveal any symbolic links?

(When I Google for "/dev/svm/dsk" with quotes, I only get your ITRC posts, some sort of forum posts in Russian and Chinese, and... Solaris sysadmin exam prep books, telling that /dev/svm/dsk is a wrong answer???)

"svm" might also refer to "Symantec Volume Manager", as Symantec is the current owner of the VERITAS product line. But that would sort of imply that your system might have a newer version of the VERITAS/Symantec volume manager than the one provided by HP. In that case, the correct documents and support may be found from Symantec's web site, not from HP.

What does the command

vxlicense -p

report on your system?

I know VxVM also has on-line mirroring functionality, and its descendant, Symantec's volume manager very likely has one too. But this series of volume manager software is highly modular: it may be possible (though silly) to license it without the mirroring functionality.

I think the necessary first step is to find out the version of the volume management product used on your system.
Once that is known, the correct documentation can be found.

MK

[Galen Benson]

I appreciate all the info Matt. In response to your questions:

SVM is the type of the dual storage appliance (Storage Volume Manager) that sits between the server and the EVA3000 and handles the virtualization of the storage.

#ll /dev/svm shows no symbolic links while #ll /dev/svm/dsk show all the files as block special files

Here's the output:

brw-r----- 1 root root 2 0x000d00 Dec 29 16:09 Amsys1_apps
brw-r----- 1 root root 2 0x000f00 Dec 29 16:09 Amsys1_d01
brw-r----- 1 root root 2 0x000c00 Dec 29 16:09 Amsys1_d04
brw-r----- 1 root root 2 0x000b00 Dec 29 16:09 Amsys1_d05
brw-r----- 1 root root 2 0x000a00 Dec 29 16:09 Amsys1_d06
brw-r----- 1 root root 2 0x000900 Dec 29 16:09 Amsys1_d07
brw-r----- 1 root root 2 0x000800 Dec 29 16:09 Amsys1_d08
brw-r----- 1 root root 2 0x000700 Dec 29 16:09 Amsys1_d09
brw-r----- 1 root root 2 0x001000 Dec 29 16:09 Amsys1_d10
brw-r----- 1 root root 2 0x000600 Dec 29 16:09 Amsys1_d11
brw-r----- 1 root root 2 0x000500 Dec 29 16:09 Amsys1_d12
brw-r----- 1 root root 2 0x000400 Dec 29 16:09 Amsys1_d13
brw-r----- 1 root root 2 0x000300 Dec 29 16:09 Amsys1_d14
brw-r----- 1 root root 2 0x000e00 Dec 29 16:09 Amsys1_d15
brw-r----- 1 root root 2 0x000200 Dec 29 16:09 Amsys1_opt_oracle
brw-r----- 1 root root 2 0x001100 Dec 29 16:09 amsys1_ecss

The vxlicense -p output is:
vrts:vxlicense: INFO: Feature name: HP_OnlineJFS [50]
vrts:vxlicense: INFO: Number of licenses: 1 (non-floating)
vrts:vxlicense: INFO: Expiration date: No expiration date
vrts:vxlicense: INFO: Release Level: 22
vrts:vxlicense: INFO: Machine Class: All
vrts:vxlicense: INFO: Site ID: 0

I'm beginning to think that Mirror-UX will not be able to mirror these mount points because they're not presented to the server via LVM. Would this be correct?

[Ron Barak_1]

You may solve your original problem by using the mirroring capabilities (synchronous or asynchronous) of your SVM/SVSP.

[Galen Benson]

Thanks Ron, but unfortunately, the SVM device has no way of seeing the MSA30 that's directly attached to the server, so this is not an option for us.

[Galen Benson]

Thanks gentlemen for the input. I've contacted support for this issue.