For Disaster Recovery: how to document BL870 with many vPARs

[tburba]

vPARs 6.x

How to document BL870 (with many vPARs) layout and structure  for Disaster Recovery purpose?

Using the above documentation, how to recover to a new, blank, cloned BL870 using Ignite?

[Doug_Lamoureux]

The recommended procedures for backing up and restoring the VSP are:

Backup
- Use your normal procedures to backup the /var/opt/hpvm directory.
- Backup may only occur during a period when VSP down or there are guaranteed to be no changes to vPar configuration or vPar run-state.

Restore
- Shutdown HPVM using /usr/bin/hpvm stop.
- Restore the /usr/bin/hpvm directory using your normal restore procedures. The restore process will only work if:
* there have been no OS or vPar product version changes.
* VSP has not had any hardware changes, such as addition or removal of I/O devices, memory or CPU.
- Restart the VSP using “/etc/shutdown -r”

[andrew_l]

The steps that Doug outlined are documented in the HP-UX Virtual Partitions v6.0 Administrator Guide.  Refer to page 47.

http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c03091127/c03091127.pdf

[tburba]

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@andrew_l wrote:

The steps that Doug outlined are documented in the HP-UX Virtual Partitions v6.0 Administrator Guide.  Refer to page 47.

http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c03091127/c03091127.pdf

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...from Page 47...

Backing up vPar configuration in the VSP

Use the normal procedures to backup the

/var/opt/hpvm directory. Backup may only occur

during a period when HPVM is down or it is ensured that there are no changes to vPar configuration

or vPar run-state.

1. So make_net_recovery can only be done when HPVM is down?

2. Exactly which additional files need to be added to the Ignite image?

[Dave Olker]

Hi Tom,

     1. So make_net_recovery can only be done when HPVM is down?

The vPar does not necessarily need to be in the "down" state.  As the text says "or it is ensured that there are no changes to vPar configuration".  You want to ensure the vPar configuration files are stable during the backup so that when the files are restored they will accurately reflect the correct state of the vPar configuration.

     2. Exactly which additional files need to be added to the Ignite image?

Possibly none, assuming you are using the default Ignite configuration and the "-a" option to include all standard directories.  The /var/opt directory should be part of any Ignite backup unless you've modified the configuration to exclude this directory.

Hope this helps,

Dave

[Joe Ledesma]

Hi Tom,

There is still this whitepaper from 2008, Backup Strategies for Integrity Virtual Machines, which says in section

Protecting the Virtual Environment Configuration

:

Because some of the configuration files may be open (e.g., the VM may be restarting, causing the

configuration file to be opened for reading), it is a good practice to take a snapshot of the /var/opt/

hpvm directory periodically.   You can accomplish this with the Enterprise Backup Solution’s open file

management capability.  Alternatively, you can explicitly create the snapshot independent of the EBS

software.  For example, create a snapshot of the /var/opt/hpvm directory in the file

/var/opt/hpvm.tar with the tar utility:

# tar cf /var/opt/hpvm.tar /var/opt/hpvm

Then be sure to include the resulting snapshot (in this example, /var/opt/hpvm.tar) in the backup

configuration for the VM Host system

--I realize the whitepaper is about HPVM not vPars however it is about the same dir /var/opt/hpvm that is now used in vPars 6.x

In response to this recommendation we do the following for HPVM:

* Have the directory get backed up as part of the regular data protection backups of the OS. These typically run at a time when admins are not making changes to VM configuration so the copies of this dir in the regular backups are probably good.

* Have a simple shell script that does this tar. (Simple because it gets the warning from tar about the sockets for the VM consoles under this directory rather than filtering out the sockets from the tar…)

* Run this script before creating an Ignite network recovery archive. These are done when VM changes are not being made.

* So the directory gets backed up multiple ways.

* You could schedule this script in cron that that a new tar file routinely gets in the regular backups.

Some caveats: Anything large in /var/opt/hpvm may make the tar take too long. Avoid using /var/opt/hpvm/ISO-images. If you had a VM crash, the dumps will need to be cleaned up.

Even though the regular backup of this dir using your backup utility when it backs up /var is probably good enough, one place having the tar file is convenient is when you have to do a cold-install rather than update-ux of the host and want to quickly get back your VM config.

Joe

[iyer]

Hi Joe

The procedure for HPVM applies to vPars too. Thanks for the tips.

Shankar