EMC to XP Migration

[sen_ux]

Hi All,

We were migrating LUNs from EMC to XP. We have just exported the VGs and Imported with new LUNs. We are not aware if there was any LUN cloning happened at storage level before preseting it to host. When we doen vgimport it got imported successfully..

Q 1. Is it possible to clone EMC LUNs with HP XP.?
Q 2. Is it possible to import VG to a fresh LUN?

Storage Admin informed that when we shut down the server data is still physically on EMC and the servers access EMC through XP. XP acts like a pass through device. XP is managing EMC Storage.Actual copy operation happens while the server is online.

Q 3. Can someone explain more about this method?

Thanks,

[Mel Burslan · Accepted solution]

There is a bit of misunderstanding of SAN concepts here.

I am not sure how XP manages the LUNs on EMC but more than likely your storage admin was referring to the multipathing solution (since you are coming from EMC, I assume you are using PowerPath) accessing the LUNs on XP. But againm I am not a SAN admin and there might be another way to cross control devices between the luns even if it sounds highly unlikely.


Q1. Yes this is possible but not with the tools at your disposal from the plain HPUX installation. There are additional tools that HP would gladly sell (rather rent) you, to accomplish such data transfer and they are not cheap and they are for a flat fee. They charge you by every gigabyte you transfer. Price depends on your relation with HP.

Q2. Importing or more precisely, vgimport is not what you think it is. If I am not mistaken, by vgimport, you mean, copying the entire contents of one LUN to another. If this is what you mean, the answer is no. vgimport command is used to allocate volumes already populated on one system and exported by that system, to be used on a totally separate server.

Q3. Controlling one array through other is not something that I am aware of, but the data being copied while the system is online, is only achieved, using a tool I mentioned on Q1 or using pvmove. Or creating an additional mirror copy on the XP array and mirroring the volumes from EMC LUNs to XP. I am not sure which one your SAN admin meant.

You need to more clearly state your needs/wants. As you can see my answers are in the very general sense. Your mileage may wildly vary.

[Torsten.]

I'm not an expert on this at all, but probably you can assign the old array as "external storage" to the XP and then "move" the data from the old array to the XP - this is at storage level only.

[Torsten.]

See

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/storage/software/extstxp/index.html

[sen_ux]

In the migration procedure, our duty was to export the VGs, reboot the server and then import the VGs. After the import VG activated and everything was find..So there is something storage admins have done at the storage level.. And in the migration plan there is a data copy step after UNIX SA's work, which will be done by storage admin..This is where I got confused.. What data copy they actually meant?...


Thanks,

[Torsten.]

Why not ask them?

[sen_ux]

Expected Question..!!!! But I could not reach the guy/team who have done this.

Thanks

[Torsten.]

I'm quite sure they used external storage option on xp.

[Raj D.]

Sen ux,
Check out with EMC if open migrator can be use, OpenMigrator is good to replicate vg to vg level & can replicate all from old SAN to new SAN.

http://www.emc.com/collateral/software/data-sheet/h1710-open-migrator-lm.pdf

Cheers,
Raj.

[sen_ux]

Thanks, I will try to get in touch with them.