Check list for HPUX system

[rajsri]

Hellow Everybody,
I would like to know is there any document or check list to verify that an HPUX system functioning at its best, after installing and configuring newly.
including hardware and software ?

Thank you very much .

Raju

[Thomas Schler_1]

So far as I know, no cook-book exists for checking proper or ideal functioning of an HPUX installation, probably because of complexity and individuality of various Unix systems.

In your case you will see if all the hardware and software is running fine when you try to use it.

You should install the newest patch bundle available at the IT Resource Center, since the software taken from your installation CD may not be up to date. Patches may improve the functionining and performance of hardware and software.

More information can be found at http://www.docs.hp.com.

[Devbinder Singh Marway]

This depends entirely on what you will be running on the servers i.e.,
what applications will you be running and what server(s) does the application run under i.e. memory size recommended, cpus , etc.., how many users will be using the system.

From this you can tweak kernel parameters ( as recommneded by the application and some system parameters )

Then it also depends whether you have high availability i.e. service guard Obviously this is more costly .

I may be barking up the wrong tree, you may have already done this , but the initial stage is to determine what will be running on the servers and from this evaluation you spec a server that would cope with the workload.

As suggested by thomas , load the patches as recommended by HP)
for example if you had users running oracle , and had the disk capability for performance you could stripe the data disks and have separate disk for redo logs .

hope this helps

[Mark Mitchell]

I would recommend Hp's Book on Performance and Tuning. It will show you how to use various tools to look at the systems metrics. For what you are doing here, I would suggest looking at how the server performs before the change, what users think of its performance durring peak and off peak times to get a better idea of how the changes your going to make have helped or hurt the situation. Then its a matter of knowing say, that my database doesn't perform well for online users when IO through put is at 80% in glance, or the Q lenght goes higher than X. If I fix that than I need to watch the CPU load average and etc.

[CHRIS_ANORUO]

There is no fixed check list for the functionality of a newly installed server. You have to observe the system for a while with diagnostic tools. You can use glance+, perview, etc.
You can have a regular check by running sar(-d;-b;-c;-v;-u;-M) at different intervals and also vmstat and top.
Run ioscan -fun, bdf ,swapinfo -tm, lvlnboot, vgdisplay and pvdisplay(-v) and put them in a file for compression with later information.

[rajsri]

Hi , I am sorry if i mislead to performance tuning, what i am after is once you build the system , what are all you check that build was sucessfull .
ex: checking all the software products installed are in configured state , and applying all the latest patchess for the products , looking for the log files etc etc , .

I am wondering is there any check list kind of thing to verify system is 100% Ok.

[Devbinder Singh Marway · Accepted solution]

Rajsri,

As you have already suggested yourself , some of the things to check :-

check /etc/rc.log ( for any failures during system startup)

2. /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log file for any errors

3. Run dmesg or check /var/adm/messages for errors.

4. Run swlist and make sure the state of patches and software are all installed .

5. If you have Predict installed hp will dial in and check system for any errors / upgrades of disk firmware etc.. and inform you of this.

6. To check your mirrors , you can try booting from the mirrored copy i.e. setboot command only root disks) and see if this boots and if you have mirror successful.

7. You've installed hp and latest patch bundle for that version.

8. on version 11 in /var/contrib/bin there is a check_pacthes script that verfiy patches on the system ( note this is cpu intensive run it at a quite period)

9. You can alos have scripts run form cron to moinitor , filesystems, rogue processes,
etc..

10. Then the real test would be to run the application to see how this performs .

The checklist is determined by yourself and your adminstartion skills i.e. where to look for errors.
HTH