Installing and Managing HP-UX on Boot Disks Greater than 2TB with LVM Layout

ManualsBrandsHP ManualsSoftwareHP-UX 11i Volume Management (LVM/VxVM) Software

Installing and managing HP-UX on boot disks greater

than 2TB with LVM layout

March 2013

Technical white paper

Table of contents

Abstract .............................................................................................................................................. 2

Audience ............................................................................................................................................ 2

Overview ............................................................................................................................................ 2

Installing HP-UX on boot disks bigger than 2 TB....................................................................................... 3

Upgrading existing HP-UX instances to support boot disks of size greater than 2TB ..................................... 5

Administration of boot disks of size greater than 2TB ............................................................................... 5

LVM Administration .......................................................................................................................... 5

DRD Administration .......................................................................................................................... 6

Post-install: Extending System volumes (root/swap/dump) ........................................................................ 6

Compatibility of boot disks of size greater than 2TB across fusion releases ................................................. 7

Software Requirements ......................................................................................................................... 7

Hardware Requirements: ...................................................................................................................... 8

For More Information ........................................................................................................................... 8

Call to Action ...................................................................................................................................... 8

Summary of content (8 pages)

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Installing and managing HP-UX on boot disks greater than 2TB with LVM layout March 2013 Technical white paper Table of contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................................. 2 Audience ............................................................................................................................................ 2 Overview...................................................................
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Abstract Starting HP-UX 11i v3 March 2013 Update release, the maximum boot disk size supported with LVM boot layout has been enhanced from 2 Terabytes (TB) to 16 TB on HP Integrity systems. This means that HP-UX can now be installed on disks up to 16 TB in size with LVM boot layout. This white paper contains specific details on installation of HP-UX on boot disks > 2 TB, administering such boot disks, limitations, and recommended practices.
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* This new higher limit is supported only from LVM volume group version 2.2 onwards. This new boot capability is not available on HP 9000 (PA RISC) platforms and with VxVM and whole disk (no volume manager) boot layouts. Warning The attempted use of disks, physical volumes, or logical volumes with sizes higher than supported limits as HP-UX boot devices may result in errors or failures. Note :LVM already supports data disks of size up to 16 TB for 2.x volume group version.
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the boot disks of size > 2 TB to the fullest, the volume group version has to be set as 2.2 STEP 4: Since the boot disk is big, you can create larger system volumes (root/boot/swap/dump) and other logical volumes (/home, /var etc) on it. Refer to Table 2 for current system volume size limits during Ignite installations. Table 2. Current System volume size limits during Ignite Cold installation LVM boot Layout Type VxVM boot layout /stand (Boot) / (Root) Swap 1.99 TB 1.99 TB 1 TB 1.99 TB 1.
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to boot failure. For a 1 TB swap, ensure that the system has at least 32 GB of RAM for a successful boot-up. While this configuration will boot up, it will run out of physical memory faster than it would if the admin had configured less swap. Unless there are definite needs, avoid increasing the swap size in order to utilize the free space on the boot disk. STEP 5: Remaining installation steps are the same as those for smaller disks. Refer to Ignite-UX Guide for installation procedure.
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DRD Administration Dynamic Root Disk (DRD) supports boot disks of size greater than 2TB from version A.3.12 which is installed by default with HP-UX 11i v3 March 2013 release update. There is no change in DRD administration process when dealing with such bigger boot disks. Refer to Table 3 for DRD behavior when various combinations of boot disk and clone disk sizes are used. Table 3. DRD behavior with boot/clone disks of various sizes DRD Version : Prior to A.3.12 version DRD Version : A.3.
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System volumes (root/boot/swap/dump) must be allocated contiguous on physical disk. For this reason, usually the expansion of a system volume requires movement of system volumes beneath to make contiguous free space for growth. Any interruptions (crash or partial movement of system volume) during movement of system volumes may make them non-contiguous. If root logical volume becomes non-contiguous, it will result in boot failure.
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• PHKL_43191 (boot loader cumulative patch) • PHKL_43266 (mdep efi_utils cumulative patch) • PHKL_43275 (USB devices, setboot cumulative patch) • PHCO_43237 (swapinfo(1M) cumulative patch) • PHCO_43400 (swapon(1M) cumulative patch) All of the above patches are delivered with both HWEnable11i and FEATURE11i bundles.