SAM Question #6 - Volume Management: How do YOU do it?

[SAM TEAM]

Well, it???s that darn SAM team again with yet another set of questions. Thanks to all of you who have responded to the previous questions! Your input is very valuable and will be extremely helpful moving forward!

Now we are curious about your volume management usage and comments. We have devised the following set of questions to understand what type of volume management you use, where you are headed, and what could be done to help you out. Please, take a minute and let us know your volume management scheme of things! (If you only knew the value of your input...)

Thanks for your time!

The SAM team


1. Volume Management: What do you use on your HP-UX system(s) ??? LVM, VxVM, both? Why do you use the one you have selected? What do you use on other platforms?

2. Do you have plans to migrate your HP-UX systems to LVM or VxVM? Why?

3. List any volume management features you like or would like to see? (What could be improved for the work YOU do?)

4. How many systems do you administer? What are they used for (roles)? Which use LVM/VxVM?

5. Additional comments about LVM or VxVM?

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

1. Use only LVM. Production machines are at 10.2 and as far as I know, VxVM is only 11.X. Two workstation are for play and testing only and are running 11i, but can't justify $$$ for VxVM for those.

2. No plans to migrate right now. These machines will all be going away soon due to corporate merger.

3. I would LOVE to see the ability in LVM to be able to do true striping and mirroring at the same time. I know LVM supports extent based striping and mirroring, but true striping and mirroring would be nice.

4. 1 x T500 - Financial reporting and accounting system test and development. 1 x K460 - Accounting system production. 1 x D330 - BASIS+ database system. 1 x C200 and 1 x B132L - test boxes for me to play with.

5. All LVM options for vgcreate, lvcreate, etc. should be available for use from within SAM. An example of something NOT available in SAM is the -D option to lvcreate.

[John Payne_2]

1) We use LVM for HPUX - it does what we need it to... We use VxVM on Solaris (for lack of a better alternative.)

2) We have no plans to migrate to VxVM. vg00 can not go VxVM, so why bother? No need to mix the management environment. We are pretty happy with LVM now.

3) I can't really think of too many features off the top of my head. Make SAM faster, but you always get that. Adding something to SAM that will tell you the command that is about to run would be nice. (Liek SMIT on AIX does.)

4) We have 50 HPUX (LVM), 20 Solaris (VxVM), 10 AIX. We are a University. You name it, we do it...(Mostly web content and adminstrative stuff, though.)

[Santosh Nair_1]

1&2) For volume management, we use LVM basically because it comes with the OS and its fairly easy to use. We really don't have a need for the advanced capabilities of VxVM.

3) One thing that AIX and VxVM has that LVM doesn't is the ability to move LVs from one VG to another. This is something that would have come in handy on many occasions. Also, the ability to change max num of PE in the VG would be nice...allowing us the capabilities to add larger disks into an existing VG.

4) Around 70 machines...all have LVM. But will be evaluating VxVM to see if it fills a need.

-Santosh

[John Bolene]

1. Use only LVM. VxVM could be down the way.

2. No plans to migrate, have to get all the machines to 11 first.

3. It does all I want right now.

4. 50 C110 (down from 250 to start with), 2 D390, several K's and L's (replaced the C110's). Mostly used for Xterm/application servers and Allbase servers with a few DNS/DCE servers thrown in.

[Deshpande Prashant]

1. We use LVM only. That's what machines came with.
2. No migration plans yet for VxVM.
3. Ability to add higher capacity disk in existing VG and ability for LVM to do load balencing between multiple path will be nice.
4. 5 HP machines all using LVM, 3 production and 2 development for dataware house.

Thanks.
Prashant.

[G. Vrijhoeven]

Hi team members,

1. I only use LVM because it is simple (i know how to work with it). On Solaris i work with Solstice Disk suite and on Unixware 7 with Veritas.

2. No not in the near future, the systems are installed and working properly. It would take a lot of adjustments in procedures (work instructions) and training.

3. LVM and Mirror UX are great tools but when a mirror disk craches it takes to mutch effort to repair. A simple resync would be great.

4. I work at a company that has give or take 600 HPUX servers. they all use LVM.

5. LVM is simple VxVM has more and better features but for a unix server that has a few volume groups, standarised hardware (disk sizes) those features work against it (complex).

Note I think it is great that VxVM is supported by HP. It is a better tool for volume management. I am just used to work with LVM and i think a lot of people (still) are.

[S.K. Chan]

1) Right we only use LVM. It does the job !
2) We might just have mix environment of LVM and VxVM.
3) Would be nice if LVM management is taken out from SAM, have a separate GUI LVM management tool which is faster and reliable. Almost all the sysadmin I know here doesn't like to use SAM for LVM operations.
4) All systems use LVM. We have quite a mix..
V-1;L-15;N-3;K-8;H-4;E-6;A-6;D-3
5) LVM is fine !!

[Michael Tully]

1. We only use LVM on all of our HP systems.

2. No plans at this stage, but certainly we
would evaluate it.

3. Incorporating MirrorDisk/UX and On-Line JFS
into a stanard LVM profuct for free would be
the answer as these are costly add-ons. Note
that AIX has had On-Line JFS for years.

4. We have a variety of servers, 'D', 'K', 'L',
'N' and 'A'. We use the servers with Informix
databases and the 'A's' for mail servers and
webservers.

5. LVM is much better than some unix flavours
in regards to dividing up disks.

[Andreas D. Skjervold]

1. LVM because it comes with system.
On Solaris we use Veritas it think?

2. No plans, haven't heard the reasons to do so yet.

3. Reduce size online.

4. 39 Test,Development and database servers, mixed HP-UX, Solaris and AIX.
All HP servers use LVM (mainly database servers.)

5. I think LVM is a great tool.

Andreas

[Eugen Cocalea]

Hi,

1. LVM only. Easier to maintain, imho. Solaris - VxVM. Better performance for what we need.
2. HPUX on LVM already. No plans to migrate. Can't justify investment (even with increased performance).
3. None that comes to my mind. Usually, my problems don't originate in LVM. It works ok for now.
4. I have about 10 HPs. Very various types (from 700s to Visualise - COOL, a 360 is my top :( ). All of them are used for development, we do storage on Linux machines (cheaper solution), so actually we only use the CPUs and memory on the HPs. And I have about 70 more computers, not HPs, Suns and PCs, runing Solaris, Linux and Windows (but I suppose this does not interest you) :)
5. LVM does its job. It's easy to set up, administer, change, recover. No negatives that comes to my mind.

E.
5.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi SAM Team:

1. I currently use only LVM. I might also note, that I almost never use SAM for LVM administration. I prefer command level access. Most of my servers are still at 10.20. One server is at 11.0 and I am planning to migrate all of them to 11.x within the year. Severs are OLTP database engines and message gateways.

2. While a very interesting product, I have no immediate plans to migrate to VxVM. Perhaps the most attractive feature is the dynamic load balancing and the mirroring/striping combinations that LVM does not provide.

3. New volume management features that come to mind would include the ability to change an LVM configuration???s ???max_pe???, ???max_lv???, and/or ???max_pv??? attributes AFTER a volume group has been created.

4. Seven HP servers (K- and D-class) used as OLTP Oracle database engines and message gateways. All use LVM.

5. If you haven???t already seen this thread, have a look. It constitutes a recent discussion of LVM and VxVM:

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x59e0f715edc6d5118ff10090279cd0f9,00.html

Regards!

...JRF...

[Craig Rants]

1. Volume Management: What do you use on your HP-UX system(s) ??? LVM, VxVM, both? Why do you use the one you have selected? What do you use on other platforms?
We are strictly an HP Shop, and we use LVM.

2. Do you have plans to migrate your HP-UX systems to LVM or VxVM? Why?
We don't plan on changing anytime soon. Just too many systems to modify, and if it isn't broke why fix it?

3. List any volume management features you like or would like to see? (What could be improved for the work YOU do?)
To tell you the truth, I have never used SAM for LVM work, but some pretty grahics showing the conceptual layout of LVM disks could be helpful for showing management types.

4. How many systems do you administer? What are they used for (roles)? Which use LVM/VxVM?
We have about 45 HP's, and a few Linux boxes. They have a lot of roles, EDI, developement, shipping....

5. Additional comments about LVM or VxVM?
Nothing comes to mind.

[Darrell Allen]

1. LVM because that's what was available when we got our systems. I have used Veritas Volume Manager on Solaris and an older version of LVM on AIX.

2. Not currently though we haven't really evaluated VxVM at this site.

3. Veritas's GUI is nice. Command line must remain strong as that's often what's available when you most need to perform VM tasks. I'd also like to see mirroring as a standard part of volume management that is standard on the system.

4. 2 HPUX servers (big change from the last job with 700 UN*X servers). Both are used for ERP.

5. Veritas on Solaris was more complex but that brought more flexability with it. For my purposes, LVM has done what I needed. But that doesn't mean there's not something better.

Darrell

[Santosh Nair_1]

Hi,

This is a minor digression, but does HP plan on doing more surveys of this sort on these forums? I personally like the idea...it shows that HP is actually listening to its customers...

Just a thought.

-Santosh

[Jitendra_1]

1. We use LVM only currently . Our Solaris server has VxVM .

2. No solid plans yet to move to VxVM as I dont see any immediate need. Although we have some new 11i servers now where I can play around with VxVM.

3. Havent thought on this yet.

4. We have almost 50 A-class, 3 N class, 2 L class, a few D/R class servers mostly used for developing and testing applications. All use LVM .

[linuxfan]

Hi,

1. We use LVM. but i prefer managing disks and filesystems manually rather than using SAM.

2. No plans to migrate to VxVM. LVM with Online-JFS suffices our needs.

3. Improvements in SAM.

a. When you have shared disks (for MC-SG), SAM creates new VG on shared disks and at present (last time i checked) there is nothing to indicate this is a shared VG and not to overwrite the data.

I would love to see something to prevent this.

b. Like Smit in AIX, would love to see what SAM is doing (commands it is executing)

-Regards
Ramesh

[A. Clay Stephenson]

1) I currently use LVM on all my HP boxes except my K260 Sandbox which is running VxVM under 11.11. I have used VxVM in the past on Sun boxes. At this point I have no great need to deploy it in a production environment.

2) I have no plans to move to VxVM in the near future but I do like the better stripping and snapshot abilities.

3) The biggest feature I would like to see is the ability to add drives larger than any that now exist within a volume group. I would gladly sacrifice a bit of usable space on each drive to allow bigger drives later in the same volume group. I tend to do most of my volume management from the command line but I always do a few within SAM from time to time just to make sure you guys have not 'improved' things.

4) I directly administer 12 boxes K's,D's,A's, and an N. This is not counting the workstations
and other servers at our various site. Theyare used for ERP, Database Servers, NFS, and all with the exception of the Sandbox are LVM.

5) I am not adverse to moving to VxVM but thank you very much I'll keep OmniBack; we don't need no stinkin' Veritas Backup.

Clay

[harry d brown jr]

1. We use LVM and HFS (legacy apps, oh and for /stand) on HP, veritas on SUN.

2. Our current HP's are LVM, and we have no current plans to move to VxVM.

3. Not much

4. Over 400 Hp 9000's. All have LVM. Over 200 are Production servers. Over 100 Are development and support machines. Over 30 servers for R&D.

5. Personally, I don't like veritas. I don't want to be bothered by a veritas salesman. I don't want to be bothered about having to rely on some third party support structure.

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

1. I use LVM and I love it.
2. We do have plans to go for 11i. So, we will be migrating from LVM to VxVM in future.
3. I like
-everything that is there on LVM now

Enhancements that may be needed

1) Load balancing the paths. This should not be "per PV" basis. It should have features like that of "AutoPath"
2) Should be able to mirror across different volume groups.
3) Mirroring to support RAID-5(the one that does parity checking....)
4) Should be able to move logical volumes around the volume groups. For ex., pvmove may not be confined to the disks within the volumegroup.
5) OnlineJFS should be integrated with standard LVM.
6) Features like MaxPE, MaxPVs etc., sometimes create headaches to system administrators. They should be made automatic.
7) I don't really use SAM. I am quite comfortable with and enjoy LVM through command line and I guess everyone here agrees with me.
Probably I will fail if you ask me to create a volume group through SAM.

4. We have around 200 HP systems here. I used to manage more than 600 while I was at HP.

5. Addtional comments are embedded in para 3.

-Sri

[Christopher McCray_1]

1. We use only LVM.
2. Only time will tell as to our plans to migrate.

3. Faster, faster, faster. Also, I know that it may be a bit radical and you are saving some of us from ourselves, but is it possible for SAM to be able to perform tasks on distributed volumes?

4. 30 HPUX (3 10.20, 27 11.0) used for production and test running numerous applications for the US Military.

5. I am happy with the current flexibility of LVM, and eagerly await any improvements or the chance to try VxVM.

[Thierry Poels_1]

Hi,

1. LVM on all servers. It does what it is supposed to do, if combined with OnlineJFS. As some of our servers are being upgraded to HP-UX 11i, VxVM comes into the picture, but no decissions yet.
2. no fixed plans yet. Only upgrade to HP-UX 11i is now planned.
3. the major drawback of SAM is its speed (or the lack of it ;). One other thing I miss is the ability to specify a particular disk within a VG to create a Logical Volume on.
4. About 40 servers, all LVM, G, E, D, R, K, A, L, N-classes and recently a Superdome ;-)). Database servers (Informix, Ingres, Oracle), Application servers (SAP, custom application,...).

regards,
Thierry.

[Roger Baptiste]

1. Volume Management: What do you use on your HP-UX system(s) ??? LVM, VxVM, both? Why do you use the one you have selected? What do you use on other platforms?

>> We currently use LVM , because that
is what we have on our HPux 10.x 11.00 systems.

>> on Solaris platform, we use Veritas manager .

2. Do you have plans to migrate your HP-UX systems to LVM or VxVM? Why?

>> I would surely like to have the choice of using VxVM, considering the good stuff i
have read about it and based on my experience
on using it on Solaris platform.
But, that does *not* mean, i would like to
jettison LVM in the near future!

3. List any volume management features you like or would like to see? (What could be improved for the work YOU do?)

>> Dynamic load balancing with PV links!
>> That would take one hell of a load
>> in creating/monitoring LVM's

>> A graphical tool which displays the
VG and LV configuration . Just for
visual presentation. Right now,
i have to use vgdisplay and dig through
tonnes of output to figure out the
free space, layout etc. A visual
graphics output would help a lot.

>> A better approach to creating PVG's.

>> More flexibility in Vg
>>creation/modification.
For instance, the VG extent sizes cannot
be changed in the current VG setup.

4. How many systems do you administer? What are they used for (roles)? Which use LVM/VxVM?

>> 10 HP systems. All for datamining.
All use LVM. One webserver (solaris)
uses VxVM.

5. Additional comments about LVM or VxVM?

>>LVM is a great tool and i like its
options, features and command sets.
For somebody who has invested so much
effort and time in learning it and
being a regular of it for the past 5 years
i wouldn't want to see it go away soon.
But, changes are inevitable, so i would
like it to complement Vxvm.

Good work team!
-R

[Roger Baptiste]

Let me also add that i do NOT use SAM for
LVM administration. The reason being, Command line gives me more flexibility. Also,
i feel more in control when running command
line for HA disks like EMC, XP series.

Reading the comments of others, i get the
feeling that we are all happy with using LVM
and wouldn't like to see it go away soon.

Another good suggestion - how about
a gui disk tool, which integrates HA control options (EMC, XP.. ), Fibre card setup
(WWN, fcmsutil...) and LV. I mean , an
integrated control center sort of thing,
which is a one point source to check
the connection from the logical LV layer
to the actual physical disk. HP should
have a natural advantage in doing this, compared to third parties (veritas, EMC),who
are coming up integrated disk management suites.

The process of disk setup has grown into
multiples tasks over the years ; LV management which used to be the only step in the process during the good old days of
internal disks and small disk arrays has
turned to the last step of a long series
of steps involving disk carving, lun identification, fibre setting etc. So, a
tool which gives the "big picture" would
be very helpful.

-R

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Hi there.
Here is my reply :

1. we use LVM on our systems

2. no plans

3. true striping and mirroring

4. systems used as database servers for Oracle databases
4 systems
- 1 system for Oracle Appl.

- 1 system datawarehouse

- 2 systems ( N4000 ) as cluster for our own software

- 1 system planned for test, training and development


5. None

Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes