Restoring from Ignite tape on different hardware.

[Darrell Tschakert]

Hi,
We have Oracle running on an rx2620 with two CPU's, 8 Gig of memory, and HP-UX 11.23. We must perform a Disaster Recovery test in the near future. Instead of recovering to an rx2620, we are told that we will be recovering to an rx8620 with 16 CPU's and 64 Gig of memory. We use Ignite version ver C.6.0.109. To create the tape, I run "make_tape_recovery -AI".

QUESTION: Can I recover an rx2620 Ignite tape to an HP rx8620? If this is possible, is it practical?

Thanks,

Darrell Tschakert

[Jaime Bolanos Rojas. · Accepted solution]

Hello Darrell!

Recovering different hardware is not an easy task, sometimes you will have to work your way through a lot of errors and knowing why is giving certain errors during this process requires a lot of knowledge on Ignite. Other times it does not work at all specially if the hardware is too different.
Certainly if you are persistan enough you will be able to clone your system.
The most important option when creating the tape is -I.

Please refer to this manual for more things to take into consideration:

http://www.docs.hp.com/en/5991-0732/5991-0732.pdf

Regards,

Jaime.

[Tim Nelson]

Basically no guarantees.

Yes you can Ignite using an image from one model to another, IF, the platforms are close. Obviously if the DR system is newer and has HW that did not exist or supported when you created the rx2620 then the recovery will not work or will at least have a number if issues.

As stated, no guarantees..Test and see what happens.

[DCE]

This is a common occurrance at DR sites.

you MAY be able to recover. Use the interactive ignite restore. On the basic screen, go into the addtional button and set clone to different hardware to true


Also, talk with your company DR co-ordinator, and make sure your contract is written in such a way that you get compatable equipment, not as good as or better equipment (that might not be compatable.

Most DR companies have a recovery service they offer, and are well aware of what servers can be iginted from a specific model..........

[Bill Hassell]

There's a pretty big difference between the 2620 and the 8620, but the most incompatible part may be with disks. If you use internal disks at home and the DR center only has a fibre array, then it will never work. Ignite cannot accomodate every possible interface, especially for booting. Neither the CPU count nor the RAM affect the restore...it's the CPU, the backplane, the I/O cards and the disks that create compatibility issues.

Note also that make_tape_recovery -AI is not recommended at all. -A is a very unstable option as it depends on what you specify for files to be included. Instead, use this more common set of options:

make_tape_recovery -I -v -x inc_entire=vg00 -a /dev/rmt/some_tape_dev