HP Serviceguard Storage Management Suite Version A.02.01 for HP-UX 11i v2 Release Notes, Edition 2 (May 2010)

Any form of the HP-UX mount command (for example, mount -o cluster,
dbed_chkptmount, orsfrac_chkptmount) must not be used in an HP Serviceguard Storage
Management Suite with CFS environment. These non-CFS commands could cause conflicts with
subsequent CFS command operations on the file system or the Serviceguard packages. Use of
HP-UX mount commands will not create an appropriate multi-node package, which means
cluster packages will not be aware of file system changes. Always use the CFS commands
cfsmount or cfsumount.
ODM Must be Used for Oracle RAC Data on CFS File Systems
ODM - Oracle Disk Manager is included in all SG SMS Oracle bundles (T2773, T2774, T2776 and
T2777). ODM must be used for Oracle RAC data on CFS file systems. ODM can also be used for
Oracle standalone databases with data on VxVM volumes with VxFS file systems. ODM is not
supported for use on file systems on LVM logical volumes. ODM improves the I/O performance
for Oracle databases with data on VxFS and CFS file systems. The performance approaches that
of Oracle data on raw disks.
Dirty Region Logging (DRL) for Mirrored Volumes
If a system failure occurs while mirrored volumes are in use, the mirrors will recover and clean
up any writes that were in progress when the system failed. The Dirty Region Logging (DRL)
feature tracks writes that are in progress to reduce the recovery effort after a system failure.
Without DRL, the entire volume must be recovered, because there is no way to determine which
blocks had writes in progress at the time of the system failure. The recovery operation is I/O
intensive and can be time consuming, depending on the number of volumes and how large they
are. In a clustered environment the IO performance of multiple nodes using the same volume
will be impacted during recovery. HP strongly recommends that you use DRL with mirrored
data volumes in a clustered environment to enable faster volume recovery. However, Oracle
database volumes should be configured without DRL, because the Oracle database application
keeps its own logs and does not require VxVM to maintain logs. For information on DRL and
the Veritas™ SmartSync Recovery Accelerator, see the Veritas Volume Manager 5.0 Administrator’s
Guide.
HP-UX Mission Critical Operating Environment Upgrade Limitations
When you purchase an HP Serviceguard Storage Management Suite (SG SMS) Mission Critical
Operating Environment (MCOE) bundle, the SG SMS software is provided on one DVD and the
HP-UX MCOE is provided on a separate DVD.
The software provided on the SG SMS DVD relies on products and filesets that are provided on
the MCOE DVD, including HP Serviceguard and the Veritas Storage Foundation products. Each
SG SMS MCOE version has a prerequisite with a specific version of HP Serviceguard and
Enterprise Cluster Master Toolkit (ECMT). Different versions of MCOE may have different
version of Serviceguard and ECMT included.
The software on the SG SMS DVD is installed using swinstall. If an HP-UX MCOE is installed
on your system and you attempt to install a SG SMS MCOE bundle that is not supported with
the versions of Serviceguard and ECMT included with the HP-UX MCOE, swinstall will
detect the incompatible software and the installation will fail.
The software on the HP-UX MCOE DVD is installed using update-ux. If a SG SMS MCOE
bundle is installed on your system and you attempt to install or upgrade to an HP-UX MCOE
version that includes Serviceguard and ECMT versions that are not supported with the SG SMS
MCOE bundle, update-ux will detect the incompatible software and exclude Serviceguard and
ECMT from the installation.
To avoid these potential installation conflicts, follow the steps in “How to Upgrade MCOE
Bundles (T2794CA, T2795CA, T2796CA, and T2797CA) to SG SMS Version A.02.01” (page 32),
whenever you install or upgrade a SG SMS MCOE bundle.
Product Issues and Limitations 37