Exploring DRD Rehosting in HP-UX 11i v2 and 11i v3 (July 2010)

Limitations and recommendations for the initial release of drd rehost
The initial release of drd rehost has been tested on:
• Integrity Virtual Machines running HP-UX 11i v2 and 11i v3
• Integrity Blades running HP-UX 11i v3
In addition, preliminary testing shows that simple (single root volume group) standalone LVM-
managed, Itanium-based systems running a September 2008 or later Operating Environment can be
rehosted to another system with the exact same hardware. The benefit of the September 2008 (or
later) Operating Environment is the availability of “Self healing of boot disk configuration”, provided
by LVM and described in the September 2008 release notes. See the section on Boot Resiliency in
HP-UX 11i v3 Version 3 Release Notes: HP 9000 and HP Integrity Server and the Summary of
Changes for Logical Volume Manager in
HP-UX 11i Version 3 September 2008 Release Notes:
Operating Environments Update Release
(both documents are in the Getting Started documents) for
more information on this LVM feature.
Using drd rehost to provision a new BL870C Blade with
HP-UX 11i v3
In this scenario, a new blade has been ordered. To deploy the blade as quickly as possible, the
system administrator wants to perform as many setup steps as possible, prior to receiving the blade.
Note:
If the blade is configured to use Virtual Connect, a virtual WWPN
can be allocated before the hardware arrives, and a SAN LUN
can be presented to that port name. Aside from this efficiency,
rehosting a DRD clone from one blade to another does not depend
on Virtual Connect
.
Assumptions
1. To simplify the discussion, the new blade will be installed in a pre-existing enclosure.
2. A pre-existing blade with an LVM root volume group is installed with the desired software. This
blade will be cloned to provide a boot disk for the new blade, so it will be known as the source.
To make use of the LVM “Boot Disk Configuration Self-Healing” feature introduced in HP-UX 11i
v3 Update 3 (September 2008), the Operating Environment installed on the source is HP-UX 11i
v3 Update 3 or later.
3. A SAN LUN is used for the disk image that will be rehosted, and the SAN management software
is used to make the LUN available to the pre-existing and new blades.
4. The required version of DRD and required patches to FIRST-BOOT, as described in Installing
Required Software, are installed on the source system.