Dynamic Root Disk: Quick Start & Best Practices

For more information on SWA, go to http://www.hp.com/go/swa.

For more information on patching, see the Patch Management User Guide for HP-UX 11.x systems at

http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01919407/c01919407.pdf.

Best Practice 3 (BP3): Basic Maintenance – Updating Within Versions of

HP-UX 11i v3

This best practice focuses on how to reduce downtime while performing an update from an older

version of HP-UX 11i v3 to a newer release of HP-UX 11i v3 (update 4 or later.) For this scenario,

our setup is as follows:

Original image: /dev/disk/disk1 (with HP-UX 11i v3, update 2 installed)

Clone disk: /dev/disk/disk5

What to apply: HP-UX 11i v3 Update 4, Virtual Server OE

Depot with OE: depot_svr:/var/depots/1131_VSE-OE

Version of DRD: B.11.31.A.3.3 or later

Objective: Perform update on my server while minimizing downtime.

BP3: Overview of Steps

1. Create the clone: drd clone –t /dev/disk/disk5

2. Use drd status to view the clone: drd status

3. Install HP-UX 11i v3 Update 4, Virtual Servier OE: drd runcmd update-ux -s \

depot_svr:/var/depots/1131_VSE-OE HPUX11i-VSE-OE

4. Ensure that the OE is installed: drd runcmd swlist

5. Create a shutdown script that runs drd sync so that files changed on the original image after

the clone was created will be propagated to the clone (see the “DRD sync” section below for more

details)

6. Activate and boot the clone: drd activate -x reboot=true

7. After updating, you can check the following logs: /var/adm/sw/swagent.log and

/var/opt/swm/swm.log.

BP3: Additional Considerations

• DRD update functionality is only supported from DRD version 3.3.x and later, which is shipped with

HP-UX 11i v3 OE Update 4 and later.

• When performing an update, LVM file systems often need to be expanded. In order to determine if

any file systems need to be expanded, you might want to run update-ux in preview mode on

either your active disk or the clone. You can then expand the file systems on the clone prior to

performing the update. See the Using DRD to Expand LVM Logical Volumes and File Systems

section, later in this white paper, for detailed information.

Best Practice 4 (BP4): Basic Maintenance – Using DRD to Assist an

Update from HP-UX 11i v2 to HP-UX 11i v3

Though a DRD clone cannot be updated from HP-UX 11i v2 to HP-UX 11i v3, DRD can be used to

assist such an update by providing a mechanism to adjust file system sizing prior to performing an