boot activation of volumegroups on EVA/HP-UX

[Marcel Hoek]

Hi,

I'm implementing an HP-UX environment with disks on an EVA5000. The system has internal bootdisks and uses SecurePath 3.0B SP1 to access devices on the EVA.

My question is, why doesn't HP-UX activate the volumegroups on the EVA during boot. It seems like the kernel module (swsp) is loaded too late and that causes the volumegroups to be disabled.

Any ideas? Do I need to make changes in my rc scripts, or is there some other trick?

[Mark Grant]

My understanding is that hpux activates volume groups that appear in /etc/fstab so you might need to check that /etc/fstab looks right.

Also, have a look in /etc/rc.log where you should see any errors that are produced when the system attempts to activate volume groups.

[Duncan Edmonstone · Accepted solution]

See my post here...

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=274147

You are right, it doesn't do it right, whcih is stunning considering it is actually a HP product - there is an official patch - talk to HP.

HTH

Duncan

[Marcel Hoek]

The problem is indeed that the swsp doesn't activate the luns until after lvmrc is called.

The thing I don't understand is that in the boot log it says (before vg00 is activated) that the kernel module (swsp) has enabled the lun's in the EVA. Strange...

I have a call open and indeed the thing can be "fixed" (if you call this fixing) by adding a new rc script that does the vgchange and mountall after the spinit script is ran.

But the thing is when you try to restore your system with ignite you have a problem. It doesn't see the physical disks and doesn't recover your volumegroups.

I've been testing it and you can work around it, by doing the vgcfgrestore after the ignite recovery. Still, not really a solution, but only a workaround.

I will keep the call open until there is a better solution. The official solution is to upgrade to Securepath 3.0C. My problem is that we still have some machines running HPUX 11.00, so that's not an option for those machines....

Thanks for the help (and suggestions to contact support)

[Tom Bear]

I too encountered the problem with the ignite recovery failing on systems with an EVA attached. I am seeking a workaround right now, and also opening a call with HP.

[Mike Naime]

Duncan:

The EVA was a Pre-merger COMPAQ product that was developed for VMS/TRU64 Alphaservers. The EVA was shipping to Compaq customers pre-merger.

The development path looks something like this: HSJ ==> HSZ ==> HSG ==> HSV(EVA)

HSJ and HSZ where SCSI controllers. HSG and HSV are the Fibre channel controllers.


Just be happy that you can boot from the SAN using the EVA. Our AIX systems can't boot from a HSG or EVA SAN because the Securepath drivers do not support it. This fact may drive us to use EVA for VMS and W2K, and something else for the AIX systems in the future.

[Uwe Zessin]

Mike,

the HSJ has a CI (Computer Interconnect) interface.
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/10503_div/10503_div.HTML

I beleive the HSD (D = DSSI interface, Digital Storage Systems Interconnect, if I recall correctly) slightly predates the HSJ. And everything started with the HSC (Hierarchical Storage Controller, that introduced the CI).

[Mike Naime]

Thanks for the info Uwe. I jumped from Microvax 3100's with internal storage directly to Alphaservers and HSG80's when I changed jobs the last time. So I was going on info from co-workers that pre-dated my time.

Either way, the EVA came from the Compaq side of the house.

[Uwe Zessin]

From MicroVAX 3100 to AlphaServers? Wow, that was an upgrade! I hope your salary was upgraded accordingly ;-)

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Mike,

I know the EVA is an ex Compaq/Digital product - my point is that the merger was nearly 2 years ago now - long enough to fix something like this you might think. Here's a direct quote from the original day 1 post merger roadmap:

"In the mid-range, we will offer the StorageWorks EVA architecture, but we will continue to offer HP VA solutions for HP-UX centric environments and StorageWorks EMA modular arrays for heterogeneous environments -- until our EVA architecture-based products fulfill our customer requirements, expected to be the middle of 2003."

Don't get me wrong I think the EVA is a great product - but this kind of niggle just doesn't go down well with HPUX admins...

Cheers

Duncan

[Mike Naime]

And on the other side of the fence. I'm still waiting to be able to link my Compaq Platinum support agreement to my ITRC profile. :-) This was promised last November.

[Rudy Williams]

Folks--

I too had the problem of the controller instances changing after a restore from Ignite tape. I opened a call with the RC. The call bounced from the Ignite team to the EVA team and back to the Ignite team.

The upshot is that the make_tape_recovery utility is not "officially supported" with Secure Path (I have 3.0C for HP-UX 11.11). There is a change request in to make MTR and SP play nice together, but HP stipulates that a CR is just that, a request.

cjw