[Info-vax] Best "Standalone" boot versions for Alpha and Itanium

[Rich Jordan]

On Tuesday, January 12, 2016 at 4:31:52 PM UTC-6, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2016-01-12 21:37:43 +0000, Rich Jordan said:
> 
> > No HBVS.  The drives are mirrored by a SmartArray 6400A or the embedded 
> > SAS controller, and there are no spare slots...
> > The movers have recommended we pull at least one drive out of each 
> > mirror set for separate transport and since the ones in the shelves 
> > will travel 'on edge' in their cages in a short rack, the ones taken 
> > out will travel flat; the movers claim that vertical transport is an 
> > issue but I couldn't find anything authoritative).
> 
> Any jolt that's strong enough to unpark the drive heads in any 
> orientation is probably going to bend some sheet metal.
> 
> If the servers are packed correctly, the disks will be fine.
> 
> But then I'd consider pulling and labeling and boxing and moving the 
> disks myself, maybe with an intermediate stop-off somewhere that can 
> run a decent backup.
> 
> Whatever you can do to avoid needing or using that DVD is preferred -- 
> those things are utterly glacial.
> 
> Semi-related: http://images.fedex.com/us/packaging/guides/Computer_fxcom.pdf
> 
> 
> -- 
> Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

Thanks again Hoff.

So I'm testing my burned copy of the 8.4 remaster on a local machine and get errors.  Test a previous burned V8.3 and get errors.  Test my factory V8.3 and V8.3-1H1 media; errors.  I guess the drive in our Integrity box is unhappy but I'll reboot/powercycle it to test asap.  I burned one copy on a PC, another on a Mac with different drives to give the box that is moving as many options as possible.

I wish we had an intermediate location to copy disks; we _could_ but one disk at a time on a PC doing sector copies unless we brought the drive shelf too (and used a DS10L with KZPEA to do the backups, which would take a while); that means it would blow the downtime window.  Also I don't have an Integrity disk and spare I could use to test the PC sector based copy beforehand.  We have to make do with the backups we can do in the time allowed.

The customer is talking to the movers about getting proper packaging for the disks since they claim the vertical mount disks are at risk.  Hopefully they have same or we may roll our own (thanks for the link).  The trucks are hopefully 'soft ride' with padded retention methods, and they say equipment can be moved in-rack with the proviso about vertical disks. We're also trying to confirm if the trucks are heated; its going to be single digits on the day of the move and acclimation time in the new location would utterly nuke the schedule. I know they're staging everything in the dock area (which is heated) to load into the truck all at once, rather than putting each piece of equipment in directly (which will freeze them if the trucks are not climate controlled).  I wonder if the movers will let us bring a heater to prewarm the cargo area (if that is even feasible; may not be if the cargo area is not insulated...)

Local HP has been contacted for availability of spares, and we should have at least a couple each of the 4 disk types in stock locally on the move day.  

I thought the rx3600 was able to boot from a USB stick but I haven't found that info (I did find the info on Hoffman Labs for .  It does appear to be able to boot via iLO VMedia but what I've heard about that is it is even slower than the optical media.  Hopefully we won't have to find out.  If I can get even one spare disk (or if the existing unmounted one is available), it might be faster to do a minimal VMS installation from the live system disk, and boot the minimal for backups.

Options galore.  No time to test.  Fun stuff.