Boot from SAN

[MárcioAFM]

Hello,

I have a task to do that consists in:

I have two internal disks in a rx8640 used in a vpar. I want to make this machine boot from san. My plan is:

1. Present a EVA disk to the vpar.
2. Mirror the system to this disk.
3. Setboot this disk to primary.
4. Reboot the vPar.

So do you think that vpar will start up with the SAN disk or will not see the disk during the boot? I would like to do this without downtime in another vpar that i have on the same nPar.

Regards,

Marcio

[Aneesh Mohan]

Yes , It should boot.

Supporting post.

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=861891

Regards,
Aneesh

[Torsten.]

Your plan sounds good, but you need to adjust your vPar configuration too, e.g.

# vparmodify -p ... -a io:(path-to-disk):BOOT

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Marcio,

This system is fully capable of booting off the SAN.

There is the old chicken or the egg question. How do you get the WWN, World Wide Name of the Fiber channel card to configure the SAN disk without an OS installed.

Once the disk is present, you can install an OS on it and boot the system.

I recommend against this approach. Anything goes wrong with the SAN, cable, fiber card, you have no system with which to diagnose the problem.

This should be possible without downing the second vpar.

[Turgay Cavdar]

If your FC card and storage support booting over SAN, then you can go. One more issue is vpmon boot path, if you plan to boot vpmon from SAN disks then you need to change the vpmon boot path. To see SAN disk from EFI you need to enable fiber channel scan at EFI.


One more issue is:

HPUX 11i v2 Operating Environment - Unable to Boot vPars Using vparload -E from Newly Presented FC LUN
ISSUE:
Prior to vPar A04.04 in Integrity systems it is not possible to boot the newly presented LUNs using the "vparload -E x" command from the MONITOR prompt. You may see the command will not detect the bootable FC LUNs.
It is because vPars set the EFIFCScanLevel to zero preventing it from scanning FC based disks in fpar level.
SOLUTION:
The workaround is to boot into nPar mode, run vparefiutil -u to update the vpdb with new EFI mappings and boot into vPar mode as usual.
The issue is fixed in vPars A.04.04

[MárcioAFM]

Hello,

Thank you all for the Help. In a few days i will do this then i give the feedback.

Turgay the way you are explain it seems i will have to reboot the server to enable the FC scan on FC card. Like the others say i thought that once i reconfigure the vpar to boot from the san disk and setboot the OS primary disk to the SAN disk the vpar will be able to boot without me change nothing on EFI.

Regards

Marcio

[Torsten.]

Question is: Does your system boots the vpmon from this disk?

[MárcioAFM]

Hello,

No. The vpmon is on other disk that are in use in the vpar1.

Regards.

Márcio

[Torsten.]

You should enable your system to be prepared to boot from all 3 pathes (pri/alt/HAA) the vpmon.

However, what you need to do now is mirror your disk (your plan) and adjust the vPar config to allow a boot of this vPar from this disk.

[Turgay Cavdar]

Normally EFI does not scan all FC paths to show up in the EFI map. If you remove local disks from your config then at the first reboot you will not boot vpmon and dont see any SAN disk at EFI. Here comes EFIFCScanLevel. But in your situation as you will use old disk for booting vpmon, you will not be affected.