Strategies for Replicating HP-UX 11i Virtual Systems onto Integrity Physical and Virtual Machines

Transcription

1 Strategies for Replicating HP-UX 11i Virtual Systems onto Integrity Physical and Virtual Machines Introduction... 2 Integrity Virtual Machine Basics for System Replication... 4 Integrity Virtual Machine Mass Storage Overview... 4 Virtual Disk Drives... 4 Attached I/O Devices Tape and Optical Media... 4 Virtual Device Identification and Removal... 5 Planning the Deployment... 5 Local Cloning and Deployment... 6 Options for Deployment Depending on Connectivity... 6 Remote Cloning and Deployment... 6 Golden Images... 6 Recovery Media... 6 Integrity Virtual Machines hpvmclone andhpvmmigrate Tools... 7 Summary... 7 For more information... 8 Websites... 8 Product Documentation... 8 White Papers... 8

2 Introduction The HP Integrity Virtual Machines (Integrity VM) product provides an ideal solution for development, evaluation, and qualification of new software application stacks. Once validation of such configurations is complete, administrators frequently need to replicate them on multiple systems, both virtual as well as physical. This white paper addresses two basic use cases local and remote for replication of systems running on Integrity Virtual Machines. The term local deployment pertains to scenarios in which the source (virtual) system is connected to the same storage area network (SAN) or local area network (LAN) as the target system. Figure 1 and Figure 2 illustrate two of the basic approaches for local system replication. The local replication discussion here will focus primarily on target systems that are physical Integrity servers. Refer to the HP white paper Using Dynamic Root Disk to Clone Integrity Virtual Machines available from for details pertaining to local replication when the target system is a HPVM virtual machine. Remote replication refers to the use case where the target system does not share storage or network connectivity with the source system. The remote replication scenario discussed here is illustrated in Figure 3. The source system is assumed to be running HP-UX 11iv3, although the same concepts can be applied to an 11iv2 system. The concepts discussed here apply to Integrity Virtual Machines version 3.5, 4.0 and later.

3 Figure 1 - Local cloning and replication using a network installation server, e.g., an Ignite-UX server. Figure 2 - Local cloning and replication using DRD cloning so that replicated systems boot from SAN storage.

4 Figure 3 - Remote cloning and replication using system images placed on sequential media. Integrity Virtual Machine Basics for System Replication Integrity Virtual Machine Mass Storage Overview HP Integrity Virtual Machines provides a high level of flexibility when configuring storage for virtual machines, including virtual DVD, virtuall disks, tape, optical media burners, and media changer devices. Virtual Disk Drives Integrity VM virtual hard disks may be dynamically or statically added to a virtual machine using either the Integrity Virtual Machine Manager graphical user interface or the Integrity VM command line interface. For example, if one wants to addd physical storage with device special filename /dev/rdsk/c1t2d3, to the virtual machine mynewvm, one simply executes the following on the physical VM Host system: # hpvmmodify P mynewvm a disk:scsi::disk:/dev/rdsk/c1t2d3 If the virtual machine is using the new AVIO storage functionality, you can addd storage similarly: # hpvmmodify P mynewvm a disk:aviostor::disk:/dev/rdsk/c1t2d3 Attached I/O Devices Tape and Optical Media Integrity Virtual Machines also supports access to tape, optical media, and media changer devices with its attached I/O capability. The first step needed to enable attached I/O functionality is to create the SCSI pass- through files on the VM Host system by running: # hpvmdevmgmt I

5 You need only execute this command once after installing the device on the physical VM Host system. This creates device special files in /dev/rscsi enabling Integrity VM s attached I/O functionality. Suppose that the physical VM Host system has a tape drive with device special filename /dev/rmt/c6t1d0 that your virtual machine requires access to. The SCSI pass-through file associated with /dev/rmt/c6t1d0 is /dev/rscsi/c6t1d0 and you may attach the tape drive to your VM by executing: # hpvmmodify P mynewvm a tape:scsi::attach:/dev/rscsi/c6t1d0 Virtual Device Identification and Removal When a virtual machine no longer needs connectivity to a storage device, detach the device by using the Integrity VM command line interface and explicitly identifying the virtual device. The explicit definitions are most easily identified by using the hpvmstatus command with the d (device listing) option. For example: # hpvmstatus P mynewvm -d [Virtual Machine Devices] [Storage Interface Details] disk:scsi:0,0,0:file:/hpvm/vhd/vmhpux0.disk0 disk:scsi:0,0,1:disk:/dev/rdsk/c4t12d0 disk:scsi:0,0,2:disk:/dev/rdsk/c5t2d5 tape:scsi:0,0,3:attach:/dev/rscsi/c6t1d0 If you need to detach the tape drive from your VM, then use the d option of hpvmmodify and the explicit device specification as follows: # hpvmmodify P mynewvm d tape:scsi:0,0,3:attach:/dev/rscsi/c6t1d0 When removing virtual disk drives, take care to unmount the file system associated with the disk, reconfigure any logical volume groups associated with it, etc. before detaching it from the VM. Planning the Deployment Before cloning the virtual system and replicating it on other systems, take care to consider the following: Identify the virtual hardware configuration of the source virtual system (with hpvmstatus P <vmname>) and make sure the target system s hardware is configured with computer resources sufficient for deploying the source system. That is, the target system should have memory and mass storage capacity sufficient to contain the deployed system. The target system should have necessary CPU and network resources as well. Target systems with a weaker hardware configuration may encounter performance problems. If you made specific system tuning changes (beyond defaults) to the source system, then those changes need to be revisited. For example, the maximum number of processes (nprocs) may change depending on CPU core count. Similarly, file system buffer cache size is defined as a percentage of physical memory and may need reconsideration. Keep in mind that system installation configures tunables based on hardware configuration. Identify the device drivers needed for the target system s storage and network hardware, installing them on the source system if necessary before cloning the source system. Fibre channel device drivers are a good example of device drivers that may need to be manually installed on the source system as they may be required for the system s boot disk. Verify that the software installed on the source system is licensed for use on the target systems on which it is being replicated.

6 Local Cloning and Deployment Options for Deployment Depending on Connectivity There are several approaches available for cloning systems using either storage area network (SAN) or local area network (LAN) connectivity. When the source and target systems are both virtual machines and they share connection to the same SAN, then using the approach described in the white paper Using Dynamic Root Disk to Clone Integrity Virtual Machines is very convenient. LAN connectivity lends itself to cloning and deployment techniques such as the concept of golden images available with Ignite-UX. You create an image of the source, i.e., golden system and then use it to replicate systems using an Ignite-UX server on the network or using virtual DVDs mapped to ISO files containing the golden image. Both of these techniques are detailed in the HP white paper Using Ignite-UX with Integrity Virtual Machines, available from Another alternative is to use the make_net_recovery functionality of Ignite-UX for local system cloning and deployment. Some care needs to be taken so that the target system s MAC address is used instead of that used by the (original) source system. The System Recovery section of the Ignite-UX Administration Guide along with the white paper Successful System Cloning using Ignite-UX, both available from are excellent resources. Remote Cloning and Deployment When no LAN or SAN connection exists between the source system and target system, solutions such as dynamic root disk and the use of Ignite-UX servers for network installation are not feasible. In such scenarios, it is often desirable to clone the system, putting its image on media (e.g. tape) and physically transporting the media to the target system site. Two basic approaches are available through Ignite-UX functionality golden images and recovery media. Refer to the Ignite-UX product documentation referenced above for details. For remote replication using tape and Ignite-UX s make_tape_recovery, verify that you are using a version of Ignite-UX on the source system that supports the tape drives on both the source and target systems. For smaller system images, the use of optical media CD or DVD may be possible. This option is available for systems with image sizes less than 4 GB in size. For such scenarios use the Ignite-UX utility make_media_install to create the image of the source system. Golden Images You can create an image of the source system, referred to as a golden image, using Ignite-UX tools such as make_media_install. Transfer that golden image to physical media using an attached I/O device (as discussed above). Subsequently the media may be loaded and installed onto the target system. Recovery Media Rather than create a golden image of a system, one may choose to use the make_tape_recovery utility available with the Ignite-UX product. After attaching the tape drive to the source virtual system, invoke make_tape_recovery as you would for any Integrity system. Subsequently, the media created may be loaded onto the target system via its tape drive. While some systems may not have local tape connectivity (e.g., the system does not support USB tape drives), keep in mind that SAN-based tape access can be used for the deployment. In some cases one may have to resort to the so-called 2 step Ignite-UX installation to install from sequential media. See the Ignite-UX product documentation for details.

7 Integrity Virtual Machines hpvmclone and hpvmmigrate Tools Two tools hpvmclone and hpvmmigrate are provided with the Integrity VM product that may be used for system replication, but are not solutions by themselves. The hpvmclone command duplicates the configuration of a given virtual machine on the same Integrity VM Host system. The new system will be identical in all aspects, including its virtual CPU attributes, memory size and functionality, and I/O configuration. The duplication of I/O configuration performed by hpvmclone does not generally include the copying of the source system s storage. To stress that point, it s worthwhile to note that the clone s virtual I/O devices map to the same logical I/O devices. Integrity VM prevents the startup of two VMs that use the same logical storage devices. As a result, the clone VM cannot start until either the source system is shut down or the clone s storage I/O configuration is modified. From a practical perspective, the source system s storage must be replicated by one of the methods discussed above or some other means before the clone can start. The hpvmmigrate tool allows a virtual machine to be moved from one physical VM Host system to another. There are two basic variations to VM migration offline and online. In either case, the virtual machine is being moved from one physical system to another. The virtual machine is not duplicated, that is, it is not replicated onto the target system by hpvmmigrate. Combining these two tools with a method of system image deployment provides a solution to system replication when the source and target systems are both Integrity Virtual Machines. Summary By leveraging the system software available on HP Integrity systems, you can clone virtual machines running HP-UX onto both virtual and physical Integrity systems. Multiple options are available for cloning and replication whether LAN or SAN connections between your source and target systems exist or not.

8 For more information Websites Product Documentation Available from docs.hp.com: Dynamic Root Disk Administrator's Guide Ignite-UX Administration Guide HP Integrity Virtual Machines Installation, Configuration, and Administration White Papers Available from docs.hp.com: Using Ignite-UX with Integrity VM Using Dynamic Root Disk to Clone Integrity Virtual Machines Successful System Cloning using Ignite-UX 2008 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. Version 1.0 ILC, 22 July 2008