11.00 to 11i, Install or update

[Ali Kouider]

I'm in the process of planning a transition from hp-ux 11.00 to 11i. I'm wondering if a fresh install is the most recommended approach or the update option is more suitable.

Have someone go through this exercice? What can he suggest? Any known problem during the transition?

Thanks in advance for any valuable info.

[Sunil Sharma_1]

Hi,

I will recommedn you to go for fresh Installation. It will be easy way.
Sunil

[Mark Grant]

This is only my opinion but I would suggest a new install. An upgrade will probably work fine but you will always have some doubt if odd things start happening. At least with a re-install you will be sure that nagging problems are not a result of the upgrade.You can export all your volume groups before hand and then import them after the install so it can all be relatively painless.We have "upgraded" all our boxes to 11i and did it with fresh installs.Just make sure you are certain ALL your software is certified to run on 11i before you start. Otherwise, it isn't such a problem.

[Ali Kouider]

Thanks for the reply guys.

The issue with the fresh install is that I have to reinstall all the applications.

As far as I understood 11.00 and 11i code is compatible. Does this mean that the same application will run with 11i without doing anything?

Does somebody has an detailed plan describing the various steps one has to take to fresh install the system.

[Stefan Farrelly]

The chances of the upgrade to 11i working arent too bad (~60%+) but for me thats still far too low, so we only did fresh installs to 11i. It also nice to do a fresh install to get everything nice and clean and to a known state. If you upgrade a lot of old rubbish/poor setup is kept.

[Jakes Louw]

I've done 43 "update" upgrades from 11.0 to 11i without any significant problems.
There are some points during the upgrade where care must be taken, but on the whole a very painless process.

[Ali Kouider]

Hi Jack,

Is it not because the systems were having basic configuration that allowed you to have smooth upgrades? Was there, omniback? Oracle? Do you have any write up describing the steps you took to achieve those smooth upgrades. I'll highly appreciate if you send me s'thing.

[Stefan Farrelly]

i think the success rate depends on how complicated your setup is. If you have a simple standalone 11.0 box without any special expansion cards then the upgrade is easy and painless as pointed out. All our upgrades are on very large servers, with multiple lan cards and types, multiple fibre cards, lan and san, lots of scsi cards (for different peripherals) and thus we had some problems and went for the clean install route.

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

I've always cold installed, but I've heard that the upgrade actually works pretty well if you have adequately sized root file systems on you 11.0 box - particularly / and /stand (if I recall correctly).


Pete

[Ali Kouider]

Hi pete,

Any rule of thumb for the file systems sizes for 11i?

Do you think by creating a recovery tape then reinstalling from it and readjusting the recommende file system sizes, it will be ok to upgrade after that?

I'm just brainstorming to avoir going to a complete fresh install.

thks.

[Pete Randall]

Check Clay's comments in this thread concerning file system sizes:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/parseCurl.do?CURL=%2Fcm%2FQuestionAnswer%2F1%2C%2C0x2d0b36e69499d611abdb0090277a778c%2C00.html&admit=716493758+1064228254677+28353475

I usually go with 200mb for / and 125mb for /stand and I think that's pretty close to what Clay is suggesting.


Pete

[Jakes Louw]

Of the 43 I mentioned, 40 are V2250/2500s with an average of 12 CPU's and 12 GB RAM. We were running standard Ethernet, ATM, SCSI, and FC/AL cards.
We had Oracle 8.0.6-32bit with several "funny" products like Precise, FastUnload, Platinum Server Monitor, Connect:Direct: Control-M, etc., etc. The largest database was 1.2 TB with a 750GB filesystem structure, all on EMC Symmetrix. We also had DLT7000s connected via SCSI-MUX. As I said: a relatively painless upgrade.

Can somebody please tell me if they are running a bigger site?

[Ali Kouider]

Thanks pete, very valuable doc that you referred.

Pete, do you have any write up regarding those upgrades?

appreciate it if you could forward s'thing to me.

[Jakes Louw]

Minimum / = 1 GB
Maximum / = 2 GB
Minimum /stand = 100 MB
Maximum /stand = 250 MB
/var around 4 GB
/usr around 1.5 GB
/tmp around 250 GB
/opt around 2 GB
/home around 200 MB

That's for a 48 CPU V2500 running Ora 8.0.6, and it has around 2 TB of EMC Symm connected.
I have 16GB of raw swap. I create a seperate /crash filesystem and link /var/adm/crash to it, or else /var gets a little restricted.
I'll search for the upgrade process doc, and upload it after I strip any confidential stuff off.

[Pete Randall]

Sorry, Ali, I don't have any writeup on upgrades. If you'll recall, I've always done cold installs!


Pete

[Steven E. Protter]

My two cents:

In a class of 15 people in HP's labs upgrading D220 boxes that were created off the SAME Ignite image.

35% failure rate.

I stayed after class and did two boxes side by side, carefully following the provided cookbook exactly. 50% failure rate.

The more complicated your system, the higher the chance of failure.

Additional space may be needed in / /usr /var

That can be done through the Ignite Interface that comes up during the upgrade.

SEP

[Chapaya]

Hello ,
I recommand you to "download" ignite from other 11i server and upload it to your old 11 .

Bye ,
Eran .

[kw_1]

I prefer cold install because it is easier to roll-back if needed (although I never once needed to). What I do is install/build the new OS on a new disk on the same server and boot off of it. If your applications are on non-default file systems or vg00, you probably will not need to re-install them. If you need to roll-back, just boot off of the original path.

[Ali Kouider]

Steven figures of the update failure rate have discouraged me to go for the update since I don't have the luxury to test it on a standby/test system and not enough time to bring back the system into production.

But the concern with the install is to reinstall the applications if they are located in /opt. Am I wrong? I know that the 11.00 application will run ok with 11i since it is said to be "code compatible". How can I install 11i but keep all the apps as is without touching them?

[kw_1]

If your application is in /opt, you will need to reinstall them. If you decided to re-install, you might want to consider install them in a new file system outside of vg00 so that your next upgrade will be painless. If your application must be install in /opt, then create a symbolic link to other file system and install it there.

[Pete Randall]

Ali,

What I do is to identify any non-HP apps in /opt before the install (the HP apps I re-install the 11i versions). Then I make sure I've run a full backup of the file systems and a couple of Ignite backups just in case. Then I simply restore the apps from the backup tape once the system has been installed.


Pete

[Jakes Louw]

Here's the "raw" update process. I stripped it out of a much larger doc, so if I missed substituting any external ref, please drop me an email. As I said, we have a huge site, with pretty complex setups, and apart from my 43 servers, there have been another 50 or so updates done by other SysAdmins with a 99% success rate. The 1% failure was because the admin doofus didn't notice error messages during the update, and carried on regardless.....he had to re-Ignite and start from scratch.
The CRUCIAL issues are all addressed in the process.

[Camel_1]

We ran update on our major production servers without any problem. But if there has chance and time availble I will go for "fresh install" to get rid of the "rubbish" setup.

[Marco Santerre]

Updates work fine. But honestly, it takes a few tries before getting it down to a perfect upgrade without any trouble.

Some of the caveats I did encountered while performing updates are Trusted Mode, and Predictive.

As far as Trusted Mode is concerned, even though it is not mentionned (unless they made a note of it in their doc since my call), it is better to unconvert your system before proceeding to your update.

Predicitive will not de-install itself and therefore when the reboot occurs and it tries to configure its filesets, it hangs on Predictive. Because it is a product that will not be supported, it is best to remove it prior to the install.

As far as file systems are concerned, the manuals are pretty much accurate to what kind of free space you need.

One last thing, probably something you know already, create one (even two) make_recovery beforehand. You might have to go back quickly.