System boot from a EMC array drive.

[Scottt]

I have question about booting HP-9000 system from EMC array.
I am planning to have one internal boot drive mirrored to a drive on EMC
symmetrix array.
In case of internal drive failure,

1. Is it possible to boot RP7410 running HP-UX 11.i MC , from EMC drive.
2. If so are there any restrictions/constraint on this?
3. How widley is this practiced in production environment?

Thanks
Ashish Palkhiwala

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi,

1. It is possible to boot from EMC. Make sure you are upto-date with PDC on your 7410.
2. If you have the internal boot drive mirrored, then you are ok. Otherwise, you will need to halt your server whenever there is a problem|maintenance on EMC subsystem. However, the performance will be as good as the internal drive.
3. I used it in my past experience but was through FastWide SCSI to EMC than fiber. I don't think it is widely used.

My personal preference goes to exactly what you are intended to do. With this I can duplicate the OS disks and with some LVM intervention, I can clone the systems.

-Sri

[G. Vrijhoeven]

Hi Ashish,

We are also thinking about booting from XP disks. I do not know if the same applys for EMC.
1. If you have A6684A,A6685A,A5158A,A6795A FC controller devices you should be able to boot from them.
2. I have a bad feeling about putting swap space on a SAN, so we like to keep SWAP on our local disks.
3. Do not know. I think it is widly used in Superdome systems.

HTH,

Gideon

[Steven E. Protter]

1. Yes, that system can boot off a fiber card.

To check for bootable devices, interupt the 10 second prompt at the console

sea

See if the drive you want to boot off of shows up.

2. I know of none, you should if available mirror to a local disk in case your fiber network goes down.

3. I don't like it, because I don't control the fiber switch. I like to be able to at least control the environment until the boot is done. But this is done. Pretty widely.

I'm including my instructions for mirroring a boot partition in case you need them.

pvcreate -B /dev/rdsk/c1t0d0 #use real disk

mkboot -l /dev/rdsk/c1t0d0
mkboot -a "hpux -lq (;0)/stand/vmunix" /dev/rdsk/c1t0d0 # use real disk


# mkboot -b /usr/sbin/diag/lif/updatediaglif -p ISL -p AUTO -p HPUX -p PAD -p LABEL /dev/rdsk/c?t?d?

If you are running 64-bit OS:

# mkboot -b /usr/sbin/diag/lif/updatediaglif2 -p ISL -p AUTO -p HPUX -p PAD -p LABEL /dev/rdsk/c?t?d?


vgextend /dev/vg00 /dev/dsk/c1t0d0 # same thing
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol1 /dev/dsk/c1t0d0

# real disk. repeat for other lvols

lvlnboot -r /dev/vg00/lvol3 # root fs /
lvlnboot -s /dev/vg00/lvol2 #swap
lvlnboot -d /dev/vg00/lvol2 #swap/dump
lvlnboot -b /dev/vg00/lvol1
lvlnboot -R
lvlnboot -v
setboot
setboot -a 52.1.0 # second disk


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