Apologies for the delay,
Great advice from the good Doctor Blinn and Alan Nabeth. Both
concede that Mylex controllers are not friendly when moving / adding drives.
As well, when we move to a clustered environment advice was that we will
probably have to turf the Mylex controllers.
Since the posting I have done an experiment with these controllers
and a BS-356 Disk pack. I built Tru64Unix on external disk pack on one
channel of my mylex controller - on an Alpha 1200. I then unpluigged the
disk pack and moved it onto an Alpha 800, booted from genvmunix, ran
doconfig -a, rebooted and hey presto we were away on a new Server. Very much
a poor man's redundancy but it works.
My two respondents also pointed out that although this would
probably work, it is a task not to be taken lightly. ANYTHING done
incorrectly (particularly associated with Mylex config) and data goes to the
big Hard Drive in the sky.
Alan's summary on what I could do between controllers is below.
Thanks to all and happy Tru64ing.
Mylex -> Mylex (probably)
Mylex -> HSZ (no)
Mylex -> Direct SCSI connected (maybe)
SCSI -> Mylex (probably not)
SCSI -> HSZ (only as TRANSPORTABLE)
SCSI -> SCSI (yes)
HSZ -> Mylex (no)
HSZ -> SCSI (maybe)
HSZ -> HSZ (yes)
-----Original Message-----
From: Malcolm Condie [mailto:malcolm.condie_at_bsbs.co.nz]
Sent: Friday, 26 February 1999 07:28
To: 'tru64-unix-managers_at_ornl.gov'
Subject: moving disk packs.
Dear DU Folk,
I have three Alpha 800s and one Alpha 1200 - all to be built with
DU4.E. Desireably and ultimately these boxes will all be in a cluster with
shared storage on StorageWorks 7000, however time constraints have meant
moving them into production much sooner than the cluster build and 7000
acquisition is possible.
To minimise the business impact when we do go the cluster way, I am
attempting to build all four boxes with external storage, driven by Mylex
3-Channel RAID controllers. OS will be mirrored in internal bays on all
machines.
I cannot use disks from the internal bays of the 800s in a
StorageWorks or external bay device as they are a "SB" part, not "VW". I am
therefore forced into buying four external disk bays (Part # BA36R-RC/D).
The question I am posing is:
In the event of a machine dying, is it possible to plug that
machine's external disk bay into the spare external Mylex controller on one
of my other machines, remount f/ss etc. All external bays would be
configured (RAID-wise) the same. I am aware that only user data and not OS
could live on these external bays. What about disklabels ( they would be the
same as the existing disks)? What about Mylex RAID config? Can this be
insitituted in a similar way to AIX, by just importing/exporting a volume?
Local Compaq agents say YES this can be done but it is no trivial
process.
I know this is a poor man's redundancy but it is a situation we are
forced into.
As usual, back to the wall on this issue and I do not know enough of
the nuances of DU disk management to give the cheque-signers a definitive
guarantee.
Any comments/criticisms or better options gratefully received.
Sincerely,
Malcolm Condie
macolmc_at_bsbs.co.nz
Operations Manager
Blue Star Business Supplies
Phone: (09) 526-2929
Mobile: (021) 706-796
Fax: (09) 526-2937
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Received on Wed Mar 03 1999 - 18:42:22 NZDT