Is RAID5 Possible with LVM? Is LVM Mirroring now Free in 11.31?

[Alzhy]

1. Is it possible to do RAID5 lvols in LVM?

2. LVM Mirroring -- is it now "free" in 11.31 or is MirrorDisk/UX still required? Just did a fresh install on an Itanic rx2660 and am surprised to see already some of the changes in v3.0.



Thanks.

[Patrick Wallek]

1. No. (I **think** Veritas Volume Manager [VxVM] can do this, but this is an additional cost product for the FULL version.)

2. MirrorDisk is still required to do mirroring. As to the FREE question -- No not really. If you buy the Enterprise Operating Environment (EOE) or higher level of the HP-UX OS, then Mirror Disk is included.

[Hein van den Heuvel]

Would you really want RAID5?
So much to lose, so little to gain!

http://www.miracleas.com/BAARF/RAID5_versus_RAID10.txt

You may want to review and consider the Oracle ASM. I've been highly sceptical about that, having had fine experiences and Tru64 LSM, HPUX LVM, Storage Controller based redundancy (EVA, HSx, XP,...) and RAW devices. My kneejerk reaction was to let Oracle to DB stuff and let the OS provision the storage, each doing best what they are good at. But if you think about it, Oracle does know more about how it is using the storage and how it might be using that better than the OS will ever know. It has an unfair advantage in that space (sic) which perhaps one should exploit, not resist. ASM does seem to deliver performance and availability, and it does seem to become accepted.

Hope this helps some,
Hein van den Heuvel (at gmail dot com)
HvdH Performance Consulting

[Torsten.]

LVM can't do RAID5, but a new feature are Striped and mirrored logical volumes.

Because this is a rx2660 you may consider to use hardware RAID. Depending on the installed controller, you can create several RAID levels.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

RAID5 native? No.

You can however white a script that does small lvextend commands and rotates them among the a group of disks.

This can give you the protection and feel of Raid 5.

As far as mirror/ux goes, its still a product you have to pay for.

SEP

[melvyn burnard]

In 11iV3 HP has updated LVM drastically, but sadly the RAID5 functionality that is available in VxVM (optional) is not one of the updates.
And for 11iV3 I believe that LVM mirroring is now included with the Enterprise OE, or available for free even.
Check with your local HP Sales Centre

[Duncan Edmonstone]

On Integrity at least (not sure about PA-RISC) MirrorDisk/UX is now a FOC add-on, and the cost of EOE and MCOE has also been adjusted to reflect this. However if you just order a system with FOE, and don't request MirrorDisk/UX, you won't get it, even though it is FOC. So make sure you ask for it!

HTH

Duncan

[Pete Randall]

Duncan,

What's "FOC"?


Pete

[Alzhy]

Free Of Charge?

Wow.. had I known.

Anyways I simply used base VxVM -- OS rooted and mirrored.

I don't think this little Itanic Turby got a SMART Array Controller. It would have made life a lot better.

As for the rest of the disks... we'll be waiting on a license transfer of full VxVM...

Man v3.0 is vastly changed but "accomodates" the skills sets of the pre v3.0 Admin.

Nice indeed.. but IMHO SOlaris 10 and the upcoming AIX 6 are still ahead...

[Doug Burton]

As far as #1.. don't know - sorry.

#2 is another question. I went to a local HP sponsored seminar about the new 11.31 and was told HP will not charge for mirroring. When? For what O/S version exactly? Don't know. Just what I was told by an HP person. More clarification would be real nice though.

[Torsten.]

IMHO (!) there is no big demand for a software RAID5 or similar.

I think in a typical setup nowadays you have a server with a hardware RAID connected (SAN).

For highly availability you can still mirror between different hardware RAIDs.

The server will have a set of 2 internal disks for mirrored boot disks. A third disk could be used for DRD.

If you have more internal disks (rx2660/rx3600/rx6600) you can use a hardware RAID like the P400 - this would not consume CPU power to calculate the RAID.

[Geoff Wild]

The hardware raid is nice - I have it on a RX6600 - downside - you need the server down to configure it (through EFI). Even if you add additional disks - you will need an outage to Hardware mirror them.

LVM mirroring is not free - included with EOE and MCOE...

There is talk that in 11iv4, lvm mirroring for just the root disk may be included...

v3 rocks - Persistent DSF is great!

Rgds...Geoff

[Torsten.]

@Geoff: I have seen this several times - a new driver version will enable more commands and features for array cards, consider to check this.

[Mike Shilladay]

Hi Nelson,

As Duncan has already said, On Integrity servers, MirrorDisk IS free providing you ask for it. If you don't it doesn't appear.

We have just purchased and installed 2 Integrity rx2660 servers and requested MirrorDisk/UX and were not charged. I queried this and that is what happens - it is free - if nowhere else, certainly in the UK.

regards,

Mike.

[Geoff Wild]

Mike - is that on Foundation OE?

Rgds...Geoff

[John Payne_2]

It's Itanium only, not PARisc. It's Mirrordisk, 11.23 or 11.31.

I could tell you the real reason they have made the change, but I think it's NDA right now. (Although the marketing answer is that it's "value add to you!")

John

[Geoff Wild]

I have June 2007 11.23 installed on Itanium:

# swlist |grep OE
HPUX11i-OE B.11.23.0706 HP-UX Foundation Operating Environment Component

There is no mirroring included:

# lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg01/lvswap4
Usage: lvextend
[-A Autobackup]
{-l LogicalExtentsNumber |
-L LogicalVolumeSize}
LogicalVolumePath [ PhysicalVolumePath... | PhysicalVolumeGroupName... ]
"m": Illegal option.


Rgds...Geoff

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Geoff,

Like I said, thats cos its free of charge with new FOE orders *if* you request it. If this system was purchased before it was free of charge, or Mirrordisk wasn't requested with it, then you don't get it - it's still not in the FOE bundle.

HTH

Duncan

[Geoff Wild]

Just got this back from one of our account reps:

"On new Integrity servers with dual core processors we can quote a "no cost" mirror-ux, this is the full version and it carries no software or support costs at least for the first three years."

Another thought I have is, Base VxVM does include root disk mirroring - means converting from lvm to VxVM.

http://docs.hp.com/en/5991-6386/5991-6386.pdf

Rgds...Geoff