VxVM System / boot disk mirroring from scratch

[noldi]

Hello,

I've installed 11i v2 UD2 (Sept. 2004 release)
on a rx2600 and an rp2470 with VxVM as the
volume manager for the system disk (rootability
support).

On each system, I have two locally connected
SCSI-Disks. Now i'd like to mirror the system
disk for each system with VxVM.

Is there a step-by-step guide available how
to do that:

a) on an HP Integrity server?

b) on an HP 9000 server?

In order to be fully redundant, I guess I need
to make sure that not only the UNIX filesystems
are mirrored, but also the swap/dump/LIF/EFI
(maybe others?) areas.

I've searched through the documentations but
I did not seem to have found the correct
descriptions so far.

So the question is how to add a system mirror
disk in order to survive the failure of the
initial system disk.

Thank's for any information on that!

Best Regards,

Arnold

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi,
I made a simple script for that (each lvextend takes some time to complete).
Ov course you have to modify the devicefile and lvols so that it reflects your enviroment. I have not tested the script on Integrity servers but I belive the commands is rather similar (check the man page for each command). The script is listed below:

pvcreate -B /dev/rdsk/c3t15d0
vgextend /dev/vg00 /dev/dsk/c3t15d0
mkboot /dev/rdsk/c3t15d0
mkboot -a "hpux (;0)/stand/vmunix" /dev/rdsk/c3t15d0
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol1 /dev/dsk/c3t15d0
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol2 /dev/dsk/c3t15d0
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol3 /dev/dsk/c3t15d0
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol4 /dev/dsk/c3t15d0
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol5 /dev/dsk/c3t15d0
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol6 /dev/dsk/c3t15d0
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol7 /dev/dsk/c3t15d0

[noldi]

Hello Leif,

thanks for your response. Unfortunately,
your answer is dealing with LVM, whereas
I've asked the same thing for VxVM (Veritas
Volume Manager V3.5).

Maybe somebody has a similar list of commands
that would deal with VxVM (both on Integrity
and PA-RISC)?

Thank's again & Regards,

Arnold

[Sanjay_6 · Accepted solution]

Hi Arnold,

You can use vxdiskadm to mirror the root disk.

You first choose option 1 to add the disk to the rootdg and then choose option 6 to mirror the volumes on the disk. I believe that is the correct options number. However vxdiskadm is a menu driven one, so you should be able to do it.

To do it through command line, try this. I've never tried this,

1.) vxdisksetup -iB cxtydz
2.) vxdg -g rootdg adddisk rootdisk=cxtydz
3.) vxrootmir -v -b -R cxtydz

here cxtydz is the mirror disk.

Hope this helps.

Regds

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi Arnold,

Take a look at this doc.

Document description: How to Mirror VxVM rootdg on Itanium
Document id: IA64KBRC00012173

http://www4.itrc.hp.com/service/cki/docDisplay.do?docLocale=en_US&docId=200000072656088

Regards,
Robert-Jan

[noldi]

Sanjay and Robert-Jan,

1) vxdisksetup -iB cxtydzs2
2) vxrootmir -bv cxtydzs2

did the trick and mirrored my existing system
disk to another under VxVM. Above steps were
for the Integrity server. For the PA-RISC
machine, I had to leave out the partition
designator, everything else was the same:

1) vxdisksetup -iB cxtydz
2) vxrootmir -bv cxtydz

I could boot from the alternate disk so I
assume that everything is all right.

Although I don't now wether the EFI partition
was already there on the second disk or if
"vxrootmir" was taking care of that.

Thank's much & Regards,

Arnold
P.S.: Now I guess the question is how to
properly undo all this . . . ;-)