HP Dynamic Root Disk (DRD) Release Notes

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Overview

2. DRD Release Information

2.1. Features for version A.1.0

2.2. Features for version A.1.1

2.3. Features for version A.2.0

2.4. Features for version A.3.0

2.5. Features for version A.3.1

3. System and Software Requirements

3.1. Required Patches and Software

3.2. Clone Features

3.3. Safe Command List

3.4. Installation and Removal of Patches and Products

3.5. Use of SD TUI/GUI

3.6. Installation Requirements

4. Known Problems and Workarounds

1. Overview

Dynamic Root Disk (DRD) is an HP-UX system administration toolset used to clone an HP-UX system image to an inactive disk for software maintenance and recovery. DRD is available for download from a software depot. System administrators use DRD to manage system images on HP PA-RISC and Itanium® -based systems. DRD complements other parts of your total HP solution by reducing system downtime while installing and updating patches and other software.

DRD is supported on HP-UX 11i v2 September 2004 and all subsequent releases of HP-UX 11i v2. It is also supported on HP-UX 11i v3 systems. DRD supports LVM or VxVM managed root volumes

2. DRD Release Information

The first release of DRD, version A.1.0 was posted to the Web in January 2007. Section 2.1 describes the features available in the initial release of DRD. Each subsequent section describes the features added with each release of DRD. Note that all releases are cumulative, and that all releases of DRD are compatible with previous versions of DRD, unless otherwise noted.

2.1 Features for version A.1.0

This release of DRD is supported on HP-UX 11i v2 with an LVM volume manager. It provides the following functionality:

• Hot maintenance capability. The DRD tools can be used to create a clone of the running system, apply patches to the clone, and boot the clone as the running system.

• Hot recovery capability. The DRD tools can be used to create a clone and boot it if the running system fails.

• SD command support. The DRD tools provide a mechanism for running SD commands such as swinstall, swremove, swverify, swmodify, swlist, and swjob on the clone.

• Clone accessibility. The clone can be mounted on the running system so that its files can be viewed or modified.

• Mirror compatibility. The DRD operation will not affect any mirror already created on the running system. DRD can be used to create a mirror of the clone during the cloning operation.

• Command line interface. The DRD tools are run from the command line.

2.2 Features for version A.1.1

This release of DRD is supported on HP-UX 11i v2 with an LVM volume manager. It provides the following functionality:

• Hot maintenance capability. The DRD tools can be used to create a clone of the running system, apply patches to the clone, and boot the clone as the running system.

• Hot recovery capability. The DRD tools can be used to create a clone and boot it if the running system fails.

• SD command support. The DRD tools provide a mechanism for running SD commands such as swinstall, swremove, swverify, swmodify, swlist, and swjob on the clone.

• Clone accessibility. The clone can be mounted on the running system so that its files can be viewed or modified.

• Mirror compatibility. The DRD operation will not affect any mirror already created on the running system. DRD can be used to create a mirror of the clone during the cloning operation.

• Command line interface. The DRD tools are run from the command line.
• NEW! The drd deactivate command was added. This restores primary boot path to the current active/running system image.
• NEW! Two new options were added to the drd activate command. “-x alternate_bootdisk” sets the alternate boot disk to the disk specified. “-x HA_alternate_bootdisk” sets the High Availability alternate boot disk to the disk specified.

2.3 Features for version A.2.0

This release of DRD is supported on HP-UX 11i v2 and HP-UX 11i v3 with an LVM volume manager. It provides the following functionality:

• Hot maintenance capability. The DRD tools can be used to create a clone of the running system, apply patches to the clone, and boot the clone as the running system.

• Hot recovery capability. The DRD tools can be used to create a clone and boot it if the running system fails.

• SD command support. The DRD tools provide a mechanism for running SD commands such as swinstall, swremove, swverify, swmodify, swlist, and swjob on the clone.

• Clone accessibility. The clone can be mounted on the running system so that its files can be viewed or modified.

• Mirror compatibility. The DRD operation will not affect any mirror already created on the running system. DRD can be used to create a mirror of the clone during the cloning operation.

• Command line interface. The DRD tools are run from the command line.

• The drd deactivate command was added. This restores primary boot path to the current active/running system image.

• Two new options were added to the drd activate command. “-x alternate_bootdisk” sets the alternate boot disk to the disk specified. “-x HA_alternate_bootdisk” sets the High Availability alternate boot disk to the disk specified.
• NEW! This release of DRD adds support for HP-UX 11i v3. For HP-UX 11i v2, only patch installation is supported. Since most HP-UX 11i v3 products are DRD safe, products as well as patches can be installed using this release of DRD. DRD support for HP-UX 11i v3 was first added in September 2007.

2.4 Features for version A.3.0

This release of DRD is supported on HP-UX 11i v2 and HP-UX 11i v3 with an LVM or a VxVM volume manager. It provides the following functionality:

• Hot maintenance capability. The DRD tools can be used to create a clone of the running system, apply patches to the clone, and boot the clone as the running system.

• Hot recovery capability. The DRD tools can be used to create a clone and boot it if the running system fails.

• SD command support. The DRD tools provide a mechanism for running SD commands such as swinstall, swremove, swverify, swmodify, swlist, and swjob on the clone.

• Clone accessibility. The clone can be mounted on the running system so that its files can be viewed or modified.

• Mirror compatibility. The DRD operation will not affect any mirror already created on the running system. DRD can be used to create a mirror of the clone during the cloning operation.

• Command line interface. The DRD tools are run from the command line.

• The drd deactivate command was added. This restores primary boot path to the current active/running system image.

• Two new options were added to the drd activate command. “-x alternate_bootdisk” sets the alternate boot disk to the disk specified. “-x HA_alternate_bootdisk” sets the High Availability alternate boot disk to the disk specified.

• This release of DRD adds support for HP-UX 11i v3. For HP-UX 11i v2, only patch installation is supported. Since most HP-UX 11i v3 products are DRD safe, products as well as patches can be installed using this release of DRD. DRD support for HP-UX 11i v3 was first added in September 2007.
• NEW! Support for VxVM 4.1 root volumes.
• NEW! Support for root volume groups with any name (previously, the root volume group had to be vg00).

2.5 Features for version A.3.1

This release of DRD is supported on HP-UX 11i v2 and HP-UX 11i v3 with an LVM or a VxVM volume manager. It provides the following functionality:

• Hot maintenance capability. The DRD tools can be used to create a clone of the running system, apply patches to the clone, and boot the clone as the running system.

• Hot recovery capability. The DRD tools can be used to create a clone and boot it if the running system fails.

• SD command support. The DRD tools provide a mechanism for running SD commands such as swinstall, swremove, swverify, swmodify, swlist, and swjob on the clone.

• Clone accessibility. The clone can be mounted on the running system so that its files can be viewed or modified.

• Mirror compatibility. The DRD operation will not affect any mirror already created on the running system. DRD can be used to create a mirror of the clone during the cloning operation.

• Command line interface. The DRD tools are run from the command line.

• The drd deactivate command was added. This restores primary boot path to the current active/running system image.

• Two new options were added to the drd activate command. “-x alternate_bootdisk” sets the alternate boot disk to the disk specified. “-x HA_alternate_bootdisk” sets the High Availability alternate boot disk to the disk specified.

• This release of DRD adds support for HP-UX 11i v3. For HP-UX 11i v2, only patch installation is supported. Since most HP-UX 11i v3 products are DRD safe, products as well as patches can be installed using this release of DRD. DRD support for HP-UX 11i v3 was first added in September 2007.
• Support for VxVM 4.1 root volumes.
• Support for root volume groups with any name (previously, the root volume group had to be vg00).
• NEW! Support for VxVM 5.0 root volumes on HP-UX 11i v2 (note that VxVM 5.0 has not yet been released for HP-UX 11i v3.)
• NEW! Introduction of the drd status command, which allows the user to easily view clone information on the system. The command specifies the following: which disk the clone resides on; when the clone was created; the location of the clone's mirror (if one exists); and the original disk that was copied to create the clone. It also specifies the state of the boot partition on the clone, mirror, and original disks, as well as which disk is booted and which is activated (the disk that will be booted from on the next reboot).

3. System and Software Requirements

3.1 Required Patches and Software

DRD requires the following patches and software (all versions):

• Judy-lib (Judy data structure library) version B.11.11.04.13 or greater

• HP-UX 11i v2:
• PHCO_34195 (Kernel Configuration Tools patch) plus all dependencies
• SW-DIST (Software Distributor) version B.11.23.0612.01 or greater
• HP-UX 11i v3: SW-DIST (Software Distributor) version B.11.31.0709 or greater

DRD versions A.3.0 and later support VxVM 4.1 root volumes. When using DRD with VxVM roots, the following patches are required:

	HP-UX 11i v2	HP-UX 11i v3
VxVM 4.1	PHCO_36111 plus dependencies	No patches are currently required; however, HP recommends that you periodically check the DRD Downloads and Patches Web page for any recommended patches if you use DRD with VxVM roots.
VxVM 5.0	PHKL_37087 plus dependencies	VxVM 5.0 for 11.31 is not yet released. HP recommends that you re-check this URL when VxVM 5.0 is available.

For information on how to acquire the patches noted above, plus their dependencies, please see the DRD Downloads & Patches Web page.

3.2 Clone Features

The DRD clone command supports the following configurations:

• Clone target must be a single physical disk (with optional second disk for mirroring) or SAN LUN. If an LVM root volume is spread across multiple disks, it can still be cloned, but the clone will be on a single physical disk. A VxVM root disk group may reside on several disks, but each disk must be an exact mirror of every other disk. The clone of a VxVM root disk group will reside on a single physical disk.

• Root volume must be LVM (DRD versions A.1.0, A.1.1 and A.2.0); root volume can be LVM or VxVM (DRD versions A.3.0 or later.)

• Prior to DRD version A.3.0, the root volume name must be vg00; the drd clone command will only clone the contents of vg00, regardless of other volume groups that exist (DRD versions A.1.0, A.1.1 and A.2.0). The root volume group may have any name when using DRD version A.3.0 or later.

3.3 Safe Command List

The drd runcmd command is used to run safe commands on the clone. The safe commands listed below apply to all DRD releases, unless otherwise noted:

• swinstall

• swremove

• swverify

• swmodify

• swlist

• swjob*

• view

• kctune (version A.1.1 and later)

*The swjob command can be used to view SD logfiles on the clone. It cannot be used to schedule jobs for later execution on the clone.

3.4 Installation and Removal of Patches and Products

The drd runcmd command can be used in conjunction with swinstall and swremove to install or remove patches. Use of drd runcmd to install or remove a non-patch product requires that all its filesets be marked DRD-safe. You can determine whether a fileset has been marked DRD-safe with the following command:

swlist –l fileset –a is_drd_safe –s depot_name product_name

Each fileset will be displayed with “true”, “false”, or blank. Filesets marked DRD-safe will display “true”. Filesets marked DRD-unsafe display “false”. Filesets that display neither (blank) are treated as DRD-unsafe.

3.5 Use of SD TUI/GUI

When using the SD TUI/GUI with drd runcmd, you may see messages about building a kernel or rebooting the system. These messages are not accurate; under no circumstances will using SD under drd runcmd lead to a reboot, nor will SD under drd runcmd lead to a kernel build on the running system.

3.6 Installation Requirements

DRD is dependent on other patches and software – refer to 3.1 “Required Patches and Software” above for more information.

4. Known Problems and Workarounds

Known problems and workarounds for each release, if any, are described on the DRD Information Library Web page.