11i v3 NFS Defect Fixes and Enhancements

[Dave Olker]

I've been contacted a number of times about this so I thought I'd post a brief notification to the ITRC community.

As of 11i v3, ONC/NFS defect fixes are no longer delivered via the standard patch process. NFS is now an Independent Software Unit (ISU) product on 11i v3, and as such we deliver defect fixes, as well as performance enhancements and new functionality, using the ISU model. The 11i v3 ONC/NFS ISU updates are available for download here:

http://software.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=ONCplus

This page contains detailed information on the defect fixes and enhancements included in each update, as well as links to the Release Notes.

To date we've delivered two ISU updates - 11.31.01 and 11.31.02 - and our goal is to release new ISU updates every 3 months. The 11.31.03 update is currently planned for release in May 2008. Each ISU update is cumulative so you only need to install the latest update to receive all defect fixes, performance enhancements and updated functionality.

I strongly encourage all HP-UX NFS customers to download and install the latest ISU updates on their 11i v3 clients and servers. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about this or any other NFS topic.

Regards,

Dave

[Tim Nelson]

Thanks for the note Dave.

Do you have any insight into why this and others is segregated ? Once upon a time you could depend on the fact that the base services were patched. Now it seems like a bigger and bigger challenge to download 5,10,15 separate package updates, get them applied and pray that they all work together.

And then wait.. there are cross dependancies between the ISUs.. arrrrrggggh...

[Patrick Wallek]

I agree with Tim. This seems very counter-intuitive to the whole patching process.

Now I have to look here for NFS patches and I have a separate spot to look for Openview patches.

I really don't see how NFS becoming an ISU means that you have to abandon the normal HP-UX patch area and naming conventions.

I assume this also means that these patches will not be included in the normal HP-UX patch bundles?

It would be really nice if all the patches were being consolidated rather than split apart.

[Dave Olker]

Hi Guys,

Thanks very much for the feedback. I really appreciate you taking the time to post these comments.

There were a number of reasons why we went to an ISU model. I won't bore you with all the details, but probably the biggest reason we did it - and the biggest benefit to HP customers - is the ISU model allows us to introduce new features and functionality without having to wait for the next release of HP-UX.

For years we listened to customers saying things like "why can't we get the next version of NFS on this release?" or "I want this feature back-ported from the next release" and when we tried to do these things via the normal patch process we were denied. The patch policies have very strict rules about introducing new functionality via a patch. They also frown on changing the performance of a product via a patch. This severely hamstrung our ability to deliver new features in existing HP-UX releases.

Now, with an ISU model, we can deliver performance fixes and new features in addition to defect fixes without the patch restrictions. For example, in ISU release ONCPlus 11.31.02 we delivered an entirely new version of the NIS client code. We originally tried to incorporate this into the initial release of 11i v3 but the code simply wasn't ready in time. If we used the patch model, no way could we have delivered this after 11i v3. Because of the ISU model, we were able to deliver it to our customers 6 months after the initial 11i v3 shipment and not have to wait for the next HP-UX release.

Another example: The NFS v4 protocol is constantly being ratified and modified to add new features and resolve issues. With the ISU model we can deliver these new NFS v4 features without waiting for the next OS release. No way could we do that via a patch.

So I do understand the issue of having to remember a new process for getting 11i v3 NFS fixes and I apologize for the inconvenience, but this new delivery model gave us many compelling reasons to migrate - the biggest of which is allowing us to get new features and performance enhancements in our customers' hands as soon as possible. We really hope HP customers will see the benefits of this new model.

Regards,

Dave

[Patrick Wallek]

Dave,

Thanks for taking time to explain the reasoning behind the decision. While I can see the advantages, I still can't say that I agree with the decision.

Was this ever run past any customers, or was this purely an internal decision?

Will there be any thought given to integrating this new procedure into SWA so that you can see the status via SWA somehow? If not, again this really defeats the purpose of something like SWA to help keep your servers up to date.

[Dave Olker]

Hi Patrick,

We're in talks with the SWA folks to see if there is any way to incorporate ISU update products into their scope. We're trying our best to make this as seamless as possible, and at the same time broadcast the location of the fixes as widely as possible so that even if the automated tools aren't showing the patch locations, hopefully our customers will know where to find them.

Regarding another point you raised earlier:

> I assume this also means that these patches
> will not be included in the normal HP-UX
> patch bundles?

We do participate in the Application Release (AR) process, so these ONCPlus bundles should be going out on future AR media automatically. For example, the most recent AR - March 2008 - includes the latest ONCPlus 11.31.02 bundle. So customers ordering systems after March 2008 should get the AR contents (including the latest ONCPlus ISU) automatically. Customers with a software subscription that includes AR CDs should get the ISU updates automatically as part of that media.

I hope this helps,

Dave

[Torsten.]

In a role of a system administrator today you have to track:

- system firmware
- HBA firmware
- peripheral devices firmware
- patches

for basic functionality (not necessarily in this order).

If you have all the different components (all the different servers, HBAs, switches, SAN arrays, libraries ...) in mind, this could be a challenging job.

In the past I was sure (more or less) to cover most of the OS updates/fixes by patching.

But now I think most of the products are ISU - do I have to update every product individually?

Example:

In the past the offline diagnostics was part of the online diagnostics bundle. But no longer.

If I want to get a current offline diagnostic bundle today, I need to go to software.hp.com, download the ISO image, burn (or whatever) and install.

LVM is ISU too, right?

How about HPSMH (IMHO a basic part of 11.31)?
I could continue I guess ...


How about all the hardware RAID (smartarray) stuff?
Only new releases enable new functionality ... How about all Fibre channel related ...?

Provocative question: Does the ISU model require more downtime for upgrading != patching?

I thing there will be another update process and I don't know about it yet ...





Sorry, this is not really NFS related.

[Torsten.]

My basic question in short is: Do I have to wait for the next release and run update-ux to keep my systems up to date?

I remember the HPVM 3.50 release notes:

"HP Integrity Virtual Machines A.03.50 is supported as a host on HP Integrity servers or nPartitions running HP-UX 11i v2 December 2007 0712 or later."

My concern is that simply patching is not enough however.

(again not only NFS related, sorry!)

[Dave Olker]

Hi Torsten,

> Provocative question: Does the ISU model
> require more downtime for upgrading != patching?

I can't speak for all ISU products, but the ONCPlus ISU products are swinstallable depot files, equivalent to a patch bundle. I doubt it would take any longer to install the ISU bundle than any other patch bundle of equivalent size (the current ISU bundle 11.31.02 is roughly 15 MB). It does require a reboot since we're replacing kernel modules.

Regards,

Dave

[Torsten.]

Dave, thank you for taking time to follow up.

But please try to understand my concern.

I was installing a new system last week and I was intended to get it up to date via a single update session (it was 11.11).

The system was telling me something like this:

Product a.01 require product b in version b.02, but you have only b.01 installed. You cannot install b.02 and a.01 in a single session.

The problem is, if more and more products are ISU, do I need to track every individual product and do I need to update every individual product individually?


This was a new system with 64 unattached FC ports - it takes ~ 40 min. to boot.

Now imagine - let's say 3 boots - if I have to install every product individually followed by a reboot - a day is just too short.


Sorry, but this is a user point of view ...

[Dennis Handly]

>Torsten: do I need to update every individual product individually?

No, you should be able to swcopy them all into a big depot and swinstall them all at once.

>You cannot install b.02 and a.01 in a single session.

Hmm, which products have this restriction?
It would seen if there was a reason for this, it would also occur for patches too.