Ignite-UX Image Compatibility?

[Kenneth Platz]

Hello everyone,

We're getting ready to bring our new environment here to our DR facility for testing for the first time, and there have been some questions raised as to what hardware we need versus what the DR vendor(s) can provide. Our environment consists of a number of vPars installed on a mixture of rp7420 and rp8420 servers. We are running a weekly make_net_recovery on each vPar and storing that to our ignite-UX server, which we then have backed up using make_tape_recovery (again, weekly) and other utilities (to get the /var/opt/ignite directory).

My question is this. Our DR solution provider has offered us a mixture of HP-UX servers, specificially SuperDome, rp7420/8420, rp7400, rp2400, and rp5400 systems. I know that we're going to have device file issues, since we're not restoring onto the same exact hardware, and we're prepared to deal with that. However, my question is will there be any hardware compatibility between the Ignite-UX images and proposed hardware? I'm certain that the SuperDome and rp7420/rp8420 systems will build just fine, but what about the lower-end servers?

[Pete Randall]

In a word, unlikely, I would think. Ignite works best on similar architectures and trying to build a rp2400 with a rp8420 image is probably not going to work. It would be nice if HP had a compatibility chart.


Pete

[Steven E. Protter]

make_tape_recovery in this situation is going to be hard. There is a great deal of variation in the hardware platform you are using.

In 2004 I went into an HP peformance center and took rp5450 tapes and restored them to a rp5470 server. This worked, though there was an extra boot or two to compensate for hardware differences.

The challenges are even larger in this situation. You need to test it, but you might be better off with Golden Images, which are less hardware dependent.

SEP

[Simon Hargrave]

I would try and restore onto as similar box as possible. Restoring onto different box types will likely cause problems with hardware drivers and the like - probably more hassle than it's worth.

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi,

There is an Ignite option "Restore to a different hardware".

Device files is not restored from the Ignite backup, instead they are created at the installation process to reflect the actual hardware. This may cause minor problem when rastoring to the original hardware if you have changed the "default" devicefiles (for e. serial ports).

But, installing from a Ignite srever to a different system need modifications in the Ignite configuration files (and, is perhaps not officially supported)