Attach San Disk to Tru64 then to HP-UX

[Joaquin Martinez_1]

Hello. Please, bear with me. We are planning to migrate some data (Oracle dump mostly) from one of our Tru64 server (v5.1) to one HP-UX box (11.31). The Tru64 box has SAN disks attched to it, so we were wondering, in order to avoid using NFS and thus use the network, if we could make the backup, detach the disk from the TRU64 box and attach it to the HP-UX box, but one thing I am not sure on what kind of procedure I can follow to accomplish this task. So, if any of you have any idea or insight about this, it would be appreciated to know.

Any additional info you would need, please let me know and thanks.

[Steven Schweda]

If a Tru64 disk uses an AdvFS file system,
then I doubt that an HP-UX system would
understand its contents. There might be some
basic UNIX file system which both systems
might understand, but if you're not already
using it, then the conversion time might
outweigh the benefit of simply switching the
disk over.

> [...] avoid using NFS [...]

There are many ways to avoid using NFS. One
example: a "tar" pipeline using
remsh/rsh/ssh. That would still involve the
network, of course.

Regardless of the method you choose, I'd run
a test on some non-critical data before I
trusted any scheme to do the right thing with
any valuable data. Moving the disk would
certainly add danger which copying its
contents would not.

[Joaquin Martinez_1]

Steven, thanks a lot for your reply.

>but if you're not already
>using it, then the conversion time might
>outweigh the benefit of simply switching
>the disk over.

Can't I just create a new filesystem with this filesystem type and dump the data in there ? that way I wont have to convert my whole Tru64 system to this type. Is that possible?

Yeah, I know about the tar, we are just trying to avoid using the network and opt for a faster way (deatching/attaching of disks from san) if possible.

[Steven Schweda]

> [...] Can't I just create a new filesystem
> with this filesystem type and dump the data
> in there ?

On some new disk, sure. I assume that UFS
is the thing to use on the Tru64 side. I
haven't looked at HP-UX closely enough to
know anything. I use AdvFS on Tru64, and
"vxfs" (or whatever the complex thing is
called) on HP-UX, so I've never tried to do
anything like this. It should be relatively
easy to run a small experiment.

But if you need to copy the stuff once from
AdvFS to UFS, and again from UFS to whatever,
then a network method might start to look
more attractive.

[Joaquin Martinez_1]

Thanks.

This is a one time procedure, as we are basically migrating, we wont be doing this much. I will try to run an small experiment:

1) Attach a disk to the Tru64 box
2) Createa UFS file system type on this new disk
3) Dump the data to this filesystem
4) Detach the disk from the Tru64 box
5) Attach the disk to the HP-UX
6) Mount the file system

At first, I dont see UFS on HP-UX, but will search a litle bit. I will let you know how it goes.

Thanks again.

[Steven Schweda]

> At first, I dont see UFS on HP-UX, [...]

I still know nothing, but these could be
interesting:

man 1m mount

man 1m fstyp

I'd guess that "hfs" is about as close as
you'll find. Note that large-file capability
is optional on HP-UX. (The "64" in Tru64 did
have some benefits.)

[Kapil Jha]

Rather than doing whole AdvFS>UFS>Vxfs

I think better would be take the backup on tape and create file system and restore the data from tape.

BR,
Kapil+

[Steven Schweda]

> I think better would be [...] tape.

Would tape be better than the network?

[Kapil Jha]

>>"in order to avoid using NFS and thus use the network"

I think Jaoquin is avoid using network in that case I think tape is pretty feasible in this.

BR,
Kapil+

[Steven Schweda]

> I think Jaoquin is avoid using network [...]

And why would that be? Because it's slower?
And tape would be faster?