The first boot vpar is determined by the bootable path, and set by nPar?

[Hanry Zhou]

I just wanted to confirm with you one concept.
When we start all vpars, we can determine which vpar could be started first, and that is same the bootable disk as the nPar. This booting disk is set within the nPar.
Is this correct?

I understand which vpar gets boot next time could not be determined.

Please let me know if my understanding is correct or not.

Thanks!

[Tim Nelson]

The boot handler on the nPar will have the primary boot path set to whatever disk you want, the IPL will boot the vpmon. From there the vpmon is in control and my guess is that it is a horse race to see who comes up first.

For redundancy, the HA boot path should be the boot disk of either the mirror of the first vpar or the primary of the second vPar.

Then the alternate boot will be what ever is left.

So, you can determine the disk that is booted but not neccessarily the order of which vPar.

[Hanry Zhou]

Hi Tim,

I have other questions on your message. But, is the booting disk of nPar same as booting disk of the first vpar?

If the answer is true, then whichever the booting disk you are using, it will also bring up the vpar where the boot disk is located, therefore, I can say that the boot disk for the npar determine which vpar could be started.

Am I right?

[Tim Nelson]

Maybe:

You could tell the nPar to boot vpmon that is on the disk from vPar2. This still would not determine the order of vPar boot.

The nPar boots a vPar monitor ( vpmon ). What disk it is on really does not matter except in the case where the vpmon could be out of sync ( i.e. change vPar configs when 1 or more vPars are down )

Consider this: boot to anyone of the disk /stand/vpmon, interupt the boot. Now that you area at the MON> prompt there really is no relevance to which vPar as you could now boot one, the other, or both.

Here is another option: change your boot handler to boot /stand/vpmon -P vPar1 only instead of vpmon -a for all ( again, it really does not matter from whos disk ). You could now control which vPar starts but then you will have to manually start vPar2.

[Hanry Zhou]

Okay. I have two follow-up questions:

1. How and where do you configure which vpar's /stand/vpmon should be used when nPar load Monitor? because there are multiple vpmon on different disks?

2. Let's say i used vpar2's boot disk to boot up the nPar, so after nPar is boot up, the system becomes the one, as same as vpar2. Correct? Where and how do you define the default nPar boot disk( which has to be one of vpar's boot disk)?

I am slow man...

[melvyn burnard]

as per normal, you define the Partition Boot Disk in BCH or EFI.
The auto file on that disk then call /stand/vpmon (usually with the -a option), and it reads the vpmon and vpdb from the physical disc you told it to boot from.
This is NORMALLY, but not necessarily, the same disc that was the origional Npar boot disc,.

I ssuggest you read the Managing Vpars manuals available at http://docs.hp.com

[Tim Nelson]

I am sure that I am not explaining it that well anyway.

The nPar boot config is set at the BCH level.
( you can also do it with parmodify but I have never used this ).
During the boot of the nPar you will need to interupt the boot sequence. At the BCH menu you can control the Primary boot path, HA boot path and finally alternate boot path.

The load string is controlled by editing the load file using mkboot on each disk (i.e. mkboot -a "hpux /stand/vpmon -a" /dev/rdsk/cxtxdx ) for each boot disk.

The vPar boot info is contolled from each vPar using the setboot, vparcreate or vparmodify)

Think of it this way. The hardware/nPar boots the vpmon, from there it is up to vpmon to control everything else.

[Torsten.]

It doesn't matter.

All vPars are in a single nPar.
From your initial boot loader (firmware and system dependent BCH/EFI) you boot the vpmon. This monitor is equal on every boot disk - no matter what vPar owns the disk.

The vpmon is now your boot loader.
If you configured "autostart" on your vPars, all will be started at the same time.

Your first vPar will remain the first, but maybe the second loads faster this time...

If you start the vPars manually, you have the control.

I don't really understand the background of your question.

[Hanry Zhou]

I just need to make sure one more questions:

When I convert to a npar, I would have to use one of boot disks withing these vpar's which are created on the npar, and I can use any one of them.

Am I correct?