HP Serviceguard A.11.20 Release Notes, September 2012

Parallel SCSI Not Supported for Lock LUN
The lock LUN functionality does not support parallel SCSI; you must use Fibre Channel for a lock
LUN. If you need to use parallel SCSI, use an LVM cluster lock disk, or a Quorum Server.
For more information about the cluster lock, see “Cluster Lock” in Chapter 3 of the latest edition
of Managing Serviceguard.
Cluster Name Restrictions
The following characters must not be used in the cluster name if you are using the Quorum Server:
at-sign (@), equal-sign (=), or-sign (|), semicolon (;).
These characters are deprecated, meaning that you should not use them, even if you are not using
the Quorum Server, because they will be illegal in a future Serviceguard release. Future releases
will require the cluster name to:
• Begin and end with an alphanumeric character
• Otherwise use only alphanumeric characters, or dot (.), hyphen (-), or underscore (_)
Optimizing Performance when Activating LVM Volume Groups
If a package activates a large number of volume groups, you can improve the package’s start-up
and shutdown performance by carefully tuning the concurrent_vgchange_operations
parameter in the package configuration file (or control script, for legacy packages).
Tune performance by increasing this parameter a little at a time and monitoring the effect on
performance at each step; stop increasing it, or reset it to a lower level, as soon as performance
starts to level off or decline.
Factors you need to take into account include the number of CPUs, the amount of available memory,
the HP-UX kernel settings for nfile and nproc, and the number and characteristics of other
packages that will be running on the node.
NOTE: Remember to do this exercise not only on the node on which the package will normally
run, but also on the node with the least resources in the cluster, as a failover or other unexpected
circumstances could result in that node running the package.
For more information, see the section “Optimizing for Large Numbers of Storage Units” in Chapter
6 of the latest edition of Managing Serviceguard (in the High Availability collection on
http://www.hp.com/go/hpux-serviceguard-docs) and the comments in the package configuration
file.
High Availability Consulting Services
Because Serviceguard configurations can be complex to configure and maintain, HP strongly
recommends that you use its high availability consulting services to ensure a smooth installation
and rollout; contact your HP representative for more information. You should also work with your
HP representative to ensure that you have the latest firmware revisions for disk drives, disk controllers,
LAN controllers, and other hardware.
HP-UX 11i v3 Features Important to Serviceguard
Serviceguard A.11.20 runs only on HP-UX 11i v3, which introduces important improvements over
11i v2, particularly in regard to the I/O subsystem. See the subsections that follow, and “What’s
in this Release” (page 12).
New Bundles
Serviceguard A.11.20 is now available as a recommended product in the HP-UX 11i v3 HA-OE
and DC-OE bundles.
Announcements 11