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Best option to migrate data between SAN arrays - mirroring, pvmove, or vgmove

 
Mike_P3
New Member

Best option to migrate data between SAN arrays - mirroring, pvmove, or vgmove

We have a situation where we need to vacate a failing SAN and move all our data to a new SAN.  OS version 11.31, servers in a ServiceGuard cluster.

I'm trying to determine what would be the best approach to move to the new SAN taking safety, speed, and efficiency into account.  We need to keep the application online and realize there will be some performance impact during the data migration.  There is a total of 2.8 TB across 26 LUNs to migrate.  Initially, we were thinking to mirror each of the LUNs to the new SAN, then break the mirror and remove the LUNs from the failing SAN.  After further investigation, it seems like pvmove or vgmove may be a better approach.

We are a team of experienced Unix Admins, but extremely limited exposure to HP-UX.  I appreciate all feedback about the question, and certainly experiences others have had with potential troubles.

Thanks in advance!

3 REPLIES 3
donna hofmeister
Trusted Contributor

Re: Best option to migrate data between SAN arrays - mirroring, pvmove, or vgmove

so this system can "see" both arrays?

if so, i'm going to vote for mirroring. you need to keep in mind that your data is likely to be changing (or at least the business isn't going to take kindly to be told that <whatever> is going to be offline for N hours) and mirroring will allow this to happen.

it would be helpful if we knew the system's model and OS rev.

JCD11336
Occasional Visitor

Re: Best option to migrate data between SAN arrays - mirroring, pvmove, or vgmove

I've done this very task many times, I used PVMOVE, as the data is deleted off the original LUN only when the move is complete.  You can watch the PE moving process by displaying the PE on each of the LUNS as the move takes place,  I beleive that the PV move process actually runs a version of mirroring under the covers.  I've run this on production LUNS (JFS, ORACLE, and recently ADABASE) without any issues.

My only concern is keeping the Service Guard configurations up to date and correct on all systems. Can you add all the new LUNS to all systems at a maintnence down time window?  and then take the OLD LUNS away on a maintenence window too?

Just always concerned about a failover while the process is moving PEs and incompatable Serviec Guard configurations.

Watch out for stripped LUNS, and shared VG's

As there is always more than one way to do anything - VGMOVE and mirroring should work too

HP is good at delivering tools that work.

Mike_P3
New Member

Re: Best option to migrate data between SAN arrays - mirroring, pvmove, or vgmove

Thanks for your responses.  Here are the systems details:

ia64 hp server rx7640

HPUX11i-DC-OE         B.11.31.1403

ServiceGuard          A.11.20.00     Serviceguard SD Product

SAN Arrays:  HP EVA 5000 (old) / HP EVA 6100 (new)

LUNs from both arrays will be zoned to both servers in the cluster