Ignite tape

[Lacrosse]

We are looking at some disaster recover options, if we make an ignite tape can we load on on a different class server and if so to create LUNs automatically on and external disk subsystem does the SCSI controller and disk all have to be the same???? I guess what I'm getting at is how different can the other system be or does it all have to be exact??

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

Therer is no other answer here than "it depends". There is some latitude especially if you include a bunch of otherwise unneeded drivers. Having said this, the very last thing that you want to ask during DR is "Will this here thang work?". If you go into DR not being able to very closely replicate your environment you are truly asking for trouble -- at a time when you really can't afford it. You should really contract to have a nearly exact duplicate available. If I were going to take your approach and not know how close a match that I could get I would do it entirely differently. Rather than using Ignite, I would maintain an up to date depot that contains all my installed software and patches. That depot would be part of my backup and offsite storage along with hardcopy/softcopy system documentation. You could then do a cold OS install and bring the system up to date using the depot. While certainly not as fast as Ignite, you could have a system back up and running in no more than a few hours --- and you would know that it would work. My Plan 'A' would still be to replicate very closely my target server.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Therer is no other answer here than "it depends". There is some latitude especially if you include a bunch of otherwise unneeded drivers. Having said this, the very last thing that you want to ask during DR is "Will this here thang work?". If you go into DR not being able to very closely replicate your environment you are truly asking for trouble -- at a time when you really can't afford it. You should really contract to have a nearly exact duplicate available. If I were going to take your approach and not know how close a match that I could get I would do it entirely differently. Rather than using Ignite, I would maintain an up to date depot that contains all my installed software and patches. That depot would be part of my backup and offsite storage along with hardcopy/softcopy system documentation. You could then do a cold OS install and bring the system up to date using the depot. While certainly not as fast as Ignite, you could have a system back up and running in no more than a few hours --- and you would know that it would work. My Plan 'A' would still be to replicate very closely my target server.

[Mark Greene_1]

I'm not sure about crossing classes. For the disk, the topology probably doesn't have to be exact, but the overlap has to be sufficient. In other words, if system A has n number of drives, and system B has n+x number of drives, you are probably good as long as the drives are the same capacity or larger on B. So if A has 5 18gig drives, and B has 10 36 gig drives, the ignite should restore no problem. Beyond this is where you are going to run into problems.

HTH
mark

[Uday_S_Ankolekar]

It's better and safe to have ignite tapes for individual boxes,however ignite tapes "can" be used for different class of servers.
Ignite tape mainly contains copy of OS and improtant system files, basically vg00. However you can take backup of other vg's by including them while creating make_tape_recovery. but it is not advisabel to have other vg's on the same ignite tape.

During distaster these tapes can be used to restore your OS , LVM structure, Kernel etc But you need restrore your production data from your other backup resources.

-USA..

[Tim Adamson_1]

Hi,

The answer is really a "depends".

Make sure the DR server supports the same OS as what you are running.

Also, the latest version of Ignite use an 11i kernel. Therefore both servers MUST be capable of booting 11i.

If they are older servers that only support 11.00 for example, then you will need to use a version of Ignite that uses an 11.00 kernel (from memory I think it was B.3.7.x).

If there any special patches or particular drivers required for the DR server due to different hardware, you can install them on the current server before the ignite tape is created. Alternatively, you can install them after the DR server is cloned.

Make sure you set "Cloning to diff HW" to true (in Basic Tab) under "additional" options when you do the recovery on the DR server. This will force a new kernel to be created.


Good luck !!!

[hongjing_zhang]

if you want to restore to differ machine,you can select interactive mode and select install hpux,it will reinstall hpux to your machine but remain configuration and software.

[Bill Hassell]

For different class servers, the rules is "it depends" (where I have I seen that before?...) The issues between server classes have to do with I/O and drivers. So making an Ignite tape on a V-class and restoring it on a D-class will definitely not work--the I/O is too radically different. Now an N-class and an rp-server are fairly similar but not if the N-class uses internal SCSI disks and the rp-server uses fibre. The key is that the Ignite image needs to have everything required for the target (I/O drivers, peripheral support such as array management tools, etc).

Other considerations: old servers would run 32bit kernels (only in some cases) while new rp-servers CANNOT run 32bit kernels at all. Really new boxes can't run the rather old 11.0 version of HP-UX, even if it is a 64bit kernel.