Moving VAX7000-710 to new CI cluster

[Russ Carraro]

Customer wants to move a VAX7000-710 from one OpenVMS legacy CI cluster to another CI cluster (V6.2). It's been so long since I did something like this that I'm looking for documentation on how best to do it, i.e. best way to remove and add node to CI cluster. Can someone point me to some documentaition? Thanks.

[comarow]

The first question is, does it have it's own system disk?

It's hard to just say read the documentation, as so much of what you are doing requires experience. There would be a number of questions to ask and based on these questions, your actions will change.

The basic procedure if it shares a system
disk is to execute cluster config on the old cluster, remove the node, connect it to the new system, and execute cluster config on the new system.

IF it has it's own system disk, and the
system is ONLY CI, you do not have to worry
about cluster group number and password.

Make sure any devices you take from your existing cluster will not duplicate any volume labels or device names.

[Martin Hughes]

This manual provides a general overview of VMS clustering, although this is for V7.3 not 6.2.

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/73final/documentation/pdf/OVMS_73_CLUSTERs.PDF

You need to be familiar with VMS clustering to make a change like this. There are too many variables in configurations to simply follow a procedure to make this change. If possible I would suggest building a test cluster and playing around with it.

[Hein van den Heuvel]

Whilest they are shuffling systems, should they not consider bold alternatives?

A VAX 7000 is a big (physical) beast.
It is kinda a shame to give it just 1 CPU (710). I guess there is an application software restriction making SMP not workable?

I guess they must have though about porting to Alpha but failed?

How about considering a software emulator?
The 710 is roughly 50 Vups, but a 2U or 4U - 2 CPU @ 2+ Ghz Wintel server can probably outperform it.

There are several folks who can help with that. To name a few:

http://www.emulatorsinternational.com/en/cvax66x0.htm
http://www.stanq.com/charon-vax.html
http://www.migrationspecialties.com/Emulator-VAX.html

Just a thought,
Hein.

[Russ Carraro]

Thanks for all your replies. It's just a cluster_config to remove and again to add.