rp8420 Golden Image: Can I Safely Install on Other Cell-Based PA8700 Systems?

[Alzhy]

I've created a Golden Image on a PA8800 based rp8420. I used Enterprise HP-UX11i v.1 DEC 2003 Release and Gold&HWE Packs. My target mations are rp8400's and SD's that are PA8700 based and that we're also licensed for HP-UX11i Enterprise.

My Questions:

1. Can I use this Golden Image on these PA8700 Cell based systems?
2. Should I re-apply Gold/HWE after a successful Ignite in addition to a Custom Patch Assessment afterwards?

BTW, my Golden Image taken from a PA8700 SD patched to DEC2003 works flawlessly onmy rp8420 and rp8400...

[Steven E. Protter]

I believe the answer to the question is a qualified yes.

I recently took an Ignite backup into an HP performance center and installed it pa-risc hardware that was significantly different. Different backplane, totally different networking.

There was an Extra boot where the hardware conflicts were resolved, but I didn't actually have to manually intervene and answer any questions.

1. Probably yes, but it might be worth trying at your local HP performance center.
2. I'd strongly consider that. The only HWE patches that installed on your golden image server were those that applied to hardware that was present. The hardware present in the target systems is different and probably needs to be re-installed. As far as Gold goes, there probably may be a few patches that only install on certain hardware, but based on naming convention you'd think you don't have to do gold again.

In the HP performance center I did not have to reinstall Gold to get my DR test server working. I didn't have to do HWE, but it still seems like a good idea.

SEP

[Scot Bean]

Conservative folks with lots of time and space use only model-specific ignite golden images and never mix images.

We are not so conservative and try to make as few golden images as possible to avoid the upkeep.

In general, you can install images created from on machine on another, but it can be tricky. Ignite has special scripts that will attempt to clean up and make the image work elsewhere.

It is usually best NOT to go 'backwards' though as you are doing:
- created on newer PA8800
- installed on older PA8700

But I would try it. May work just fine.

Usually I try to create the image on my oldest machine with recent patches. Rolling forward onto newer models seems to work better this way.

[Sundar_7]

Hi Nelson,

Thumb rule is the architecture should be the same, model can be different

This is because now ignite-UX uses different INSTALL kernels to boot depending on the architecture. The model of the system doesnâ t matter but the architecture of the system does.

The kernels are

WINSTALL - used for all the systems that are ONLY 64 bit (N, L , A etc)

INSTALL â used for systems that can run BOTH 32 and 64 bit HP-UX (K,D,R etc)

VINSTALL â used for V-Class systems

For example, the ignite-ux recovery tape created on a K-Class system cannot be used to boot a N-Class system since the kernel copied to the Ignite-UX tape is VINSTALL and the kernel WINSTALL which is used to boot N-Class systems is not available in the tape.

hope this helps in the future :-)