hpux boot over SAN query...

[Steve McKenna_3]

Hello.

We are preparing for a DR drill and the thought of boot over SAN was brought up. I'm having a philosophical issue with this. When we get to the cold site and begin to rebuild servers, how would you recover this node? Normally, we lay down a vanilla o/s, install tsm and restore the node, but with BOS, what steps would I follow. Anyone brave enough to help me untangle this in my head will be an instant hero!

Thanks!

...Steve...

btw.. rp8400 with 4 vPars on 11i...

[RAC_1]

Booting from SAM is possible With VxVM.
You can also, prepare a ignite tape of it and recover quite fast.

A full blown VxVM is an additional product-$$

Anil

[Steve McKenna_3]

Are you saying that I cannot boot from our SAN unless I have VxVM? I'm running vPars with lvm disks...

[Rick Garland · Accepted solution]

Booting over SAN does have advantages but in a DR situation, make it as simple as possible.

I have all of vg00 on an internal disk. I ignite this vg. I set up the backup stuff to be in vg00 as well (usually) else I include the vg in my Ignite that the backup stuff resides on.

On restoring the Ignite image there is very little I have to worry about. All of vg00 is present (plus the other vg if included) so all I need to do is start restoring.

Because my Ignite contains all my backup stuff, no need to reload it.

All data resides on the SAN but local OS is on local disks

[Steve McKenna_3]

Rick,

Thanks. That is exactly how we have this set up now. Believe it or not, we thought boot over SAN might actually SIMPLIFY disaster recovery!

Thanks very much.

...Steve...

[Florian Heigl (new acc)]

Steve,

it surely would be tempting to boot right of the SAN, and it will keep things easier if nothing goes wrong You simply have to ship a diskless hp9000 to the DR site and plug it in.

*if* nothing goes wrong.
realistically, You'd have to install something to get the adapter wwns, update the zoning while surrounded of panicing people and wait for the changes to be pushed through the switches. if You haven't just discovered that there is an issue with the DWDM line and the SAN is not yet fully available.

with local disks Your more independent from external influences.
You could even consider mirroring them to the san to have both options available, but simply installing hp-ux either by a vg00 ignite or from os media is simpler in the end.