How to use the HP-UX Portable Image Tool for Integrity fluid cross-technology moves

Introduction

Most modern data centers are composed of heterogeneous server environments with servers from multiple vendors

of different types, generations, and product families. Fluid cross-technology logical server moves allow you to choose

server configurations that make the most sense for your environment without having to consider the mechanics of

moving images and the underlying technologies.

A logical server is a set of configuration information that you create, activate, and move across physical and

virtual machines. It describes compute resources (number of CPU cores, memory etc.) and connections to storage

fabric and networks.

Logical servers can be moved between physical servers with Virtual Connect and ESX/Integrity VM virtual machines,

and between physical servers with Virtual Connect with unlike configurations.

In this document, we describe the hpuxpitool, related modules and how to use it to make networking portable by

retaining instance numbers (PPAs) between source and target. During a P2V or a V2P move from a source to a target,

the instance numbers change for networking interfaces. These instance numbers are maintained by the General

Input-Output (GIO) subsystem on a per-class and instance number—hardware path mappings are stored in I/O

configuration files. All the existing HP-UX configuration files that contain persistent configuration rely on the original

networking interface. The idea is to reassign the source instance numbers for all networking devices on the target

using Kernel Registry Services (KRS) based on a MAC address match to avoid changing any configuration files.

Logical Server use cases

Some of the use cases for logical servers include:

• Reduce time to deploy new servers

Logical Servers can be standard blueprints for new servers –

Reduces time and possible configuration errors –

• Conveniently expand and contract application server pools

Logical Servers can be activated and deactivated on demand –

• Reuse resources for another purpose

Logical Server on a given resource can be deactivated and the same resource can be activated with another –

Logical Server

• Move servers to different locations for maintenance purposes

Minimal or no downtime –

Does not require network administrator or SAN administrator involvement –

Key challenges

The following are the key challenges for Physical to Virtual (P2V) and Virtual to Physical (V2P) moves between

VC Integrity blades and Integrity VM hosts:

• Making networking portable by retaining instance numbers between source and target.

• Migrating the EFI State Information (ESI) between source and target

• Support for a variety of configurations including Serviceguard and VLANs

• Pre-move validation between source and target

• N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) support

The HP-UX Portable Image (PI) tool resolves first challenge to make networking portable by retaining instance numbers

between source and target.