Urgent: Booting N-Class from external drives

[Craig A. Sharp]

I have an N-Class server that currently boots from the internal 9 Gb drives. The server is being rebuilt with 11i and the internal 9 Gb is too small. I would like to boot the server from my external SC10's off one of the 18 Gb drives that are there.

Are there any issues with booting from the external drives rather than the internal drives? I would use the internal drives as a different vg instead of vg00.

Thanks!

Craig

[Pete Randall]

Craig,

It shouldn't be any problem booting off the external drives. In fact, it's a good idea since the externals are hot swappable and the internals aren't. If you have a failure and the external hot-swappable drive is mirrored, you can painlessly recover.


Pete

[Joshua Scott]

No issues on a JBOD enclosure like the SC10. just select the appropriate disk(s) when the install utility asks which disk(s) you want to install hp-ux on.

the only thing is that if you are using an Ultra160 HBA, you may not be able to boot from an external array with older releases of hp-ux 11i.

[Victor BERRIDGE]

Hi Craig,
This is not a direct answer to your question, but more of a go ahead advice...
I did a similar install 4-5 years ago on something HP at the time (and at install) said does not support:
its still working great (2 servers K360with different HDS subsystem (DF350 and DF400):
$ /usr/sbin/ioscan -funC disk
Class I H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Description
======================================================================
disk 2 8/12.0.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE HITACHI DF400
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0 /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0
disk 3 8/12.1.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE HITACHI DF400
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0 /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0
disk 4 8/12.2.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE HITACHI DF400
/dev/dsk/c0t2d0 /dev/rdsk/c0t2d0
...
disk 19 10/0.4.4 sdisk NO_HW DEVICE HITACHI DF400
/dev/dsk/c1t4d4 /dev/rdsk/c1t4d4
disk 0 10/0.6.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE SEAGATE ST39173WC
/dev/dsk/c1t6d0 /dev/rdsk/c1t6d0
disk 1 10/12/5.2.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE TOSHIBA CD-ROM XM-5701TA
/dev/dsk/c2t2d0 /dev/rdsk/c2t2d0
$ vgdisplay -v vg00|grep dsk
PV Name /dev/dsk/c0t0d0
PV Name /dev/dsk/c1t0d0 Alternate Link

I opted at the time for this configuration because at the time the HDS disk where much faster than the HP internal, and could use alternate pathing (RAID5 -no mirror).

Good luck
All the best
Victor

[Stefan Farrelly]

We boot all our N-class servers off external disks and as long as theyre mirrored on a separate path (just to be safe) you should never have a problem.

[Helen French]

Keeping boot disk on external storage is not a problem at all. If you are going to mirror the boot disk, select the alternative from a different SCSI channel or SC10 (if available).

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Pete,

Minor correction, my man.
Although it's not a "painless" hot-swap like Jamaica, FC or SC, the N-class internal disks can be swapped on-the-fly. Done it several times. Number 1 rule - Verify which disk to swap! Luckily they are labeled on the back, though.

Rgds,
Jeff

[harry d brown jr]

I've been booting an N-class with 5 partitions off a pair of FC10's for close to 3 years now, and we boot close to 50 N's with 4 paritions apiece from our SAN.

Go for it!

live free or die
harry