HP-UX 11i v3 Installation and Update Guide, March 2009 (Update 4 Release)

Reduce Downtime Using Dynamic Root Disk
With the HP-UX system administration toolset, Dynamic Root Disk (DRD), you can
clone an HP-UX system image to an inactive disk. Then you can:
• perform system maintenance on the clone while your HP-UX 11i system is online
• update from an older version of HP-UX 11i v3 (initial release, Update 1, Update
2 or Update 3) to HP-UX 11i v3 Update 4
• quickly re-boot during off hours once the desired changes have been made
• utilize the clone for system recovery, if needed
• rehost the clone on another system for testing or provisioning purposes (on VMs
or blades utilizing Virtual Connect; LVM only)
The bundle name is DynRootDisk. The product name is DRD. Administrators can
use DRD to reduce downtime for system maintenance by creating an inactive clone of
the booted system, then applying patches and products to the clone. The modified
clone can then be booted at a convenient time. DRD supports both HP Logical Volume
Manager (LVM) and Veritas (VxVM) root volumes except where specifically noted
above, and runs on both HP-UX 11i v2 and v3.
The HP-UX Dynamic Root Disk website at http://docs.hp.com/en/DRD provides a
product overview, download links, documentation links, and installation instructions.
NOTE: Rehosting capabilities for HP-UX 11i v2 are different than for those of HP-UX
11i v3. For information, see the Dynamic Root Disk System Administrator's Guide for
HP-UX 11i v2, 11i v3, available at the above website.
Reduce Downtime Using Dynamic Root Disk 101