Network is going down...

[Ralph Murphy]

The network is going down for an extended period of time. Do I need to shutdown the HP9000 servers or will they find the network when it is available again?

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

Shalom,

The answer is it depends on the server. Older D and K class boxes can lock up when their network switches are powered down. I've seen this happen.

More modern servers should tolerate the outage well. They'll start functioning right depending on what you mean by the network being down.

I personally recommend that if there is power you might wish to take advantage of this to do some needed software updates and such.

SEP

[Ralph Murphy]

There are 2 N4000 (L Class) and a rp7405.

The L classes I can hook a console to. I haven't been able to locate the console port on rp7405. I can get to the GSP but will I be able to find the server?

They (management) want to keep the servers up, I trying to find out if there ae options available JIC ( just in case )

[Chan 007]

Hi,

No problem, no need to shutdown, ensure inform that application related batch jobs are on hold/moved for timebeing.

As SEP told, you can do any pathc/maint work..

Chan

[Ralph Murphy]

Thanks for the quick replies... Network going down in 5... 4... 3... 2...

[A. Clay Stephenson]

The one exception to this would be if this is part of an MC/SG cluster and all the networks were going down. In that case, some of the boxes would TOC when all heartbeats are lost.

[Steven E. Protter]

An excellent point on SG, which I missed.

I've had similar situations in the US where the servers were left running(no sg) without incident.

When this happened on the Sabbath, I arranged for shutdown prior to the work so nobody would be wondering where I was. When it did not, I was in doing catch up work on patches. They were oracle servers and were in constant need of attention.

SEP

[Sundar_7]

Ralph,

You might run to "DEAD NETWORK DETECTION" problem. By default HP-UX pings the gateways to see if they are alive. If the gateway is not responding, it will be marked down.

ndd -get /dev/ip ip_ire_status

Try the above command when the network is back online and make sure there is no "DEAD" route.

Sundar.

[Ralph Murphy]

Thank you all for your responses. The network is back on line and it doesn't appear to have had any ill effects to the servers.

[Ralph Murphy]

I hope this thread is able to assist someone in future who may have concerns about network changes and effects on HPUX servers.