vPar configuration on a rp8440

[UxBoD]

Hi,

It is a long time since I have worked with nPAR/vPARs and have a question. We are about to purchase a rp8440 (PA-RISC) with 16 CPUs, 128GB RAM, 8 DualPort-HBAs and 4 SCSI disks. It will be configured as a single nPAR so once we have created the first vPAR it will be the master (hold the console) and then from that we would create any other vPARs we required. Now, as it has only four internal disks if they are connected to says two LBAs and we wished to mirror the O/S then in theory we could only create two vPARs ???

[likid0 · Accepted solution]

You can also boot from SAN.

you could for example have 8 vpars, 6 booting from san and 2 of them booting from scsi internal disks.

[UxBoD]

Thanks for the reply :) Yes that is what I thought as I currently boot our N-Class from SAN. The reason for checking is that a third-party is going to build the servers for us (different country to what I am in) and they are not comfortable with BFS; don't know why as it has always worked for me.

One thought I had to make use of the internal disks would be to setup all the vPARs to use BFS (EVA4400) and then close the primary vPARs boot disk to the internals using DRD. If for some reason the SAN was unavailable we should still be able to boot the primary vPAR. Is that a sound theory ?

[UxBoD]

close = clone (oops, fat fingers day)

[Jozef_Novak]

Hello,

you can also purchase a SCSI-attached JBOD which will provide you with more disks than the four you actually have. You can then comfortably equip all your planned vpars with mirrored boot disks.

J.

[UxBoD]

Understood, but that incurs additional expense ;) Plus enough redundancy has been built into the SAN so BFS should be no issue at all. Dual HBAs, Dual switches and a EVA. Due to the port density required we are also going to purchase the switch PowerPack upgrade so that between the internal EVA FC switches and the 24 port B classes in front of them we can trunk two 8GB ports together :D

[likid0]

UxBoD,

I usally prefer(It's just what I allways have done) to have the vpar that is the monitor, booting from internal disks, so in case you have problems with comunications(fiber cable,switches,san migrations) you allways have a npar to boot with no probs, and from there debug the problem.

I have also recently started using recently mirrors with 1 internal scsi disk and 1 san disk, works fine also.


And I think using DrD it's a great Idea, I have a sheduled job that runs every night that syncs the Drd clone

[Jozef_Novak]

Hello (again),

DRD is a great tool, just keep in mind that you need to run at least HPUX 11iv2. I mention this since you have a PA-RISC machine. DRD does not run on 11iv1.

HTH,
J.

[UxBoD]

Yes, sorry should have stated that the O/S will be 11iV3 DCOE. I think it would be best to build all vPARs to BFS and then use DRD to clone the primary to the internal disks (as has been stated) incase of a SAN failure. Though if the SAN goes we have lost our apps and data aswell ;) We are looking to implement the SAN enterprise manager software aswell so should have good visibility on it all.

Thanks to both of your responses it has been very informative and solidified my thoughts.

[Torsten.]

Just to add:

"the first vPAR it will be the master (hold the console)"

This is no longer needed, because it is a sx2000 based server. No need to worry.

[UxBoD]

Oh, so whichever vPAR boots first will take the console ? or each will have its own. Sorry, it has been a long time since I have done vPAR configuration :(

[Torsten.]

From the manual:

"vPars Console Assignment on sx2000-based Servers The consoleUART for sx2000-based servers
is no longer on a PCI card, and the system console is memory mapped and moved to PDH.
Hence, there is no LBA component for the console to be assigned to a virtual partition.
Thus, for sx2000-based servers, youmust assign the console by hardware path to a virtual partition
by performing the following steps. For sx2000-based servers running vPars A.03.xx, the console
hardware path must be assigned to the first virtual partition created."



Your version will be A.05.0x, because you want to have hp-ux 11.31.

[UxBoD]

Thanks all appreciated :)