Linux = HP-UX Tools

[Krishna Prasad]

We have a need to put Linux on a intel platform to run an application.

I need to know what software is available for Linux (SuSe?) that will give the same functionality as my HP-UX servers.

1. LVM/On-Line JFS - must be able to extend any filesystem on-line. I understand that the boot filesystem or /stand my be the exception to this but this is ok.

2. Ignite for Linux? I need a bootable image for DR reasons.

3. Dual-Home/APA - We use APA on our HP-UX machines any dual home functionality will do.

Thanks in Advance,

Ron

[Kodjo Agbenu · Accepted solution]

Hello Ron,

All these are good questions.

1. LVM/Online JFS : to use LVM and journaled filesystem with online resizing capabilities, "SuSE" is a good choice, as they developed LVM and Reiserfs, and they have made these functionalities available in their products for 2 or 3 years.

According to the kernel loaded from LVM volume, I have heard that the latest version of LILO (linux loader) supports these features, but I'm not sure. In all cases, after the kernel is loaded from non-journaled filesystem on native partition, it will be able to deal with LVM and Reiserfs.

2. I would suggest Mindi and Mondo Rescue tools, as it seems to be the most valuable disaster recovery solution with Linux. For more information on these tools, have a look at :
http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo

However, if you just want DR on individual partitions just like Symantec Ghost, you can use Partimage (http://www.partimage.org). Note that Partimage does not need a reboot to create image (that is a stupid behaviour of Symantec Ghost).

3. Linux implements some failover capabilities.

=> Disk failover :

With Hp-ux, the LVM layer recognizes alternate paths. Moreover, Mirror/UX and LVM stripping functionalities help setting up software RAID 0, 1 and 1+0.

With Linux, the MD driver included in the kernel implements RAID 0, 1, 1+0, 4 and 5. Moreover, volumes on separate physical disks connected to separate physical scsi or ide interfaces can be mixed up to provide security without impact on performances.

=> LAN failover

With Hp-ux, the APA product is used to increase LAN bandwidth and LAN card failover.

With Linux, the same functionality can be reached using the "Bonding" driver. I don't know how to configure this, but your favorite Linux consultant will be happy to do this for you.


To summarize your questions : "will Linux do the job just like Hp-ux does ?"
The answer is definitely "yes, it will. Sometimes, it will act the same way as Hp-ux. Sometimes, it will act differently. But most of the time, it will be free...".

Good luck.

Kodjo

[Krishna Prasad]

Am I missing something with Suse version of LVM?

It doesn't seem to work the way I would like it to.

It seems to do partioning more then LVM.

It limits me to 4 primary partions.

I would like to create an Operating System that looked close to my HP-UX layout.

/ 140 MB
/stand or /boot in linux 85MB
/var 1 GB
/usr 1 GB
/tmp 512 MB
/opt 650 MB
/home 20 MB
swap space 1.5 GB

It seems Linux is only letting me have 4 partions per drive.

I hope I am missing something.

Ron

[Mark Fenton]

You're running into the DOS'ish conventions that yet afflict Linux.

You can have more than four partitions, it's just that only four can be "primary" partitions, the rest are "extended". ((don't ask me what the difference is, I never did figure that part out.........))

[I_M]

Talking about "something like APA" on linux,
it is called "bonding".

On 2.4.18 kernel, the bonding driver IS in.

For more information, read Documentation/networking/boniding.txt.

Intel also has been released the driver for what they call "AFT" on Linux.
It is only for Intel 8255x chip card.

Regards,

[Wodisch]

Hello Ron,

about #2: Read the documentation on how to build your own "DemoLinux" CDROM at www.demolinux.org and *burn* your configuration onto a bootable CDROM. In case of trouble your can then restore with (as they claim) only three mouse-clicks..

HTH,
Wodisch

[Krishna Prasad]

New problem....

I liked what I say with mondo www.microwerks.net/~hugo but....it doesn't work that well with Suse.

I get an error when compiling -> no such file newt.h.

The documention mentions that it has had problems with Suse.

The partimage.org link no longer exists.
The demolinx.org looks like it is an CD image to run off of instead of backing up and restoring my image to disk?

Any other suggestions for an Ignite like software?

[Kelli Ward]

For a number of linux applications and utilities you can browse:
http://www.linux.org/apps/
They may have what you are looking for and other interesting packages as well.
Good luck
Kel

[Jeffrey Wong]

Sorry, this isn't really a reply to the initial question, but one of the replies about the 4 partition limit. On x86's the master partition table only has 4 slots in it, hence the limit of 4 primary partitions. The work around for that limit was to set up an extended partition. This puts a pointer in a primary partition slot to another partition table. I don't remember what the limits on the secondary partition table was. With respect to DOS, many versions are even more limited. Some versions of DOS only recognizes a single primary partition and assumes that any other partition in the table are extended partition pointers!

[Christoph Rothe_3]

As I have brought some Linux systems with alternate path / multipath in production, I can say:

Do not use the MD device for alternate pathing! It will do a failover. Once. If you want another failover you must re-enable it manually.

If you have no problem building your complete system out of logical volumes (ok /boot may be an exception as it is not needed when the system is up and running), you should consider using a version of LVM containing Stefan Baders patch for multipathing.

Unfortunately I don't know where to find it, but SuSE 8.1,8.2 and SuSE Enterprise Server 8 have it in their LVMs. You then activate the functionality via the command pvpath.

Also a workaround for the MD problem can be found here:

http://groups.google.de/groups?q=%2Blinux+%2Blvm+%2Bmultipath+%2Bpatch+%2Bsuse&hl=de&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=20030214162722.GB11209%40marowsky-bree.de.lucky.linux.kernel&rnum=2

HTH,

Christoph

[John Meissner]

at the company I work at we use SuSE Enterprise Linux 7 & 8 because SAP has certified them. They have LVM and I would recomment Reiser FS instead of ext3. The admin tools for this distribution are easy to use and the distribution is easy to install. I believe you can also install LVM on Red Hat (my prefered distribution) but I honestly havn't tried.

for the bootable image - you might want to look into Red Hat's kickstart utility.

I am not familiar wit APA so I can't answer that part for you ... sorry.
I hope this helped

[Steven E. Protter]

1. lvm was ported to Linux. I did a thread months ago and the actual users reported that lvm was not quite ready for prime time. It was ported by reverse engineering. The default linux filesystem is a journaled filesystem.

2. Ignite for Linux. No. I boot my machine, which has an Intel NIC card, with a special diskette. It connects to an NT Server and I use Norton Ghost to create an image. Another special diskette does an automatic boot, connect and restore of the image. If you have a cd writer on the box, Norton Ghost can write the system to a bootable cd set.

3. Don't know.

Good Luck.

Bakcground. I'm running a web hosting business on a set of machines which now currently run Red Hat 7.3. A gradual upgrade is planned to Red Hat 9 when I think its stable.

I have a home made failover environment where the secondary machine detects the total loss of the main machine, it attempts to take over service. It has a nightly data transfer to keep it up to date. The system has worked in test, and once did take over production when someone managed to fill up the main systems keyboard to the brim with water(my wife, long story).

SEP

[Christoph Rothe_3]

Relying on SUSE lvm IS ready for production use. Personally I did never experience any problems with it...

Decide for yourself :-)

Christoph

[Steven E. Protter]

That's great news Chris.

I know HP's thoubs about ditching lvm were stopped after wide use and acceptance began in the Linux commmunity.

Can't wait to start playing with it. It should be interesting if you can create and change mirror assignments with lvextend command like in HP-UX.

If I can use the lv commands as I do in HP-UX it will make me a much more competant Linux Admin.

Here is a link to my thread on lvm, which is several months old.

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0xf7a24a988422d711abdc0090277a778c,00.html

SEP

[I_M]

FYI
Linux has a software mirroring.
But it is NOT in the LVM.
It is called MD(Multiple Device).

Other LVM commands are almost same as HP-UX's.
You can use LVM snap shot for backup purpose.... Enjoy!

Regards,

[Krishna Prasad]

Sorry about the delayed point assignments.

I didn't know this thread was still being replied too.

Well it's been a long time since I actually started the thread. And boy have I learned more about SuSE and Linux in general.

I do use Mondo an all my production Linux Boxes and it actually does work a lot like Ignite. The originally problem I had was simply needed to upgrade some of the programs that mondo uses. ( This is when I learned what an rpm was and how to use it. = swinstall/patches. )

I have been able to use LVM on Linux in some testing.

We have been in production with Linux servers for over a year now. We are trying to get an Oracle Rack test going. ( Me and the primary DBA )

Really interested in how the Clustered FileSystem really works and how two different systems and take ownership of the drives/data without causing FileSystem/Data corruption!

I work in a SAP shop and this could be a great advancement to have two Database Servers "ACTIVE" in a cluster.

If what I read works it will be much better then the Active/Passive clusters that most databases use today for failover.

Ron

[Krishna Prasad]

Sorry about the delayed point assignments.

I didn't know this thread was still being replied too.

Well it's been a long time since I actually started the thread. And boy have I learned more about SuSE and Linux in general.

I do use Mondo an all my production Linux Boxes and it actually does work a lot like Ignite. The originally problem I had was simply needed to upgrade some of the programs that mondo uses. ( This is when I learned what an rpm was and how to use it. = swinstall/patches. )

I have been able to use LVM on Linux in some testing.

We have been in production with Linux servers for over a year now. We are trying to get an Oracle Rack test going. ( Me and the primary DBA )

Really interested in how the Clustered FileSystem really works and how two different systems and take ownership of the drives/data without causing FileSystem/Data corruption!

I work in a SAP shop and this could be a great advancement to have two Database Servers "ACTIVE" in a cluster.

If what I read works it will be much better then the Active/Passive clusters that most databases use today for failover.

Ron

[Krishna Prasad]

Sorry about the delayed point assignments.

I didn't know this thread was still being replied too.

Well it's been a long time since I actually started the thread. And boy have I learned more about SuSE and Linux in general.

I do use Mondo an all my production Linux Boxes and it actually does work a lot like Ignite. The originally problem I had was simply needed to upgrade some of the programs that mondo uses. ( This is when I learned what an rpm was and how to use it. = swinstall/patches. )

I have been able to use LVM on Linux in some testing.

We have been in production with Linux servers for over a year now. We are trying to get an Oracle Rack test going. ( Me and the primary DBA )

Really interested in how the Clustered FileSystem really works and how two different systems and take ownership of the drives/data without causing FileSystem/Data corruption!

I work in a SAP shop and this could be a great advancement to have two Database Servers "ACTIVE" in a cluster.

If what I read works it will be much better then the Active/Passive clusters that most databases use today for failover.

Ron

[Steven E. Protter]

Since the thread started things have changed.

Updated answers interleaved with your original question.

I need to know what software is available for Linux (SuSe?) that will give the same functionality as my HP-UX servers.

1. LVM/On-Line JFS - must be able to extend any filesystem on-line. I understand that the boot filesystem or /stand my be the exception to this but this is ok.

LVM yes, without mirror/ux Online JFS no, Linux uses its own filesystem and though I don't know how to do it, you can extend a filesytem hot in Linux with LVM or Linux tools without any add in products.


2. Ignite for Linux? I need a bootable image for DR reasons.

No. Though we just found out about Service Guard for Linux. I have heard unofficial rumors about some kind of port, but nobody will talk on the record. Its a tough port, because Linux does have a totally different method of creating boot information on disks.

3. Dual-Home/APA - We use APA on our HP-UX machines any dual home functionality will do.

This apparently does exist in the Linux world, its open source and not built into the distributions.

SEP

[Caesar_3]

Hello!

As i understand that you migrate from hpux to linux.

The oracle work good on the hpux but for today
linux give also good work for oracle on.
Well SAP also run in the world on linux grow more and more.

HP made develop of service guard for linux for about 1-2 years.
And as i know people alrady use it.

Caesar

[Krishna Prasad]

The HP product "Ignite" isn't available on Linux, However as stated before - Mondo does on Linux what Ignite does for HP-UX.

The APA functionality I needed was provided by Intel the provider of the network cards.

[Balaji N]

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x398f3f9a15add711abdc0090277a778c,00.html

see this thread. and the post by Jerome about Hugo. Went thru the web site and is pretty interesting. it can server as a replacment for ignite for UX.
-balaji