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

[Rich Jordan]

On Tuesday, January 12, 2016 at 6:49:30 PM UTC-6, David Froble wrote:
> 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
> > 
> > 
> 
> And so is the tape.
> 
> I believe Steve has mentioned used disks before, at very attractive prices. 
> Purchase a few, test them, and perhaps have one to boot from to do the disk 
> copies and such.
> 
> I'll admit, it's been a while since I've done this kind of stuff.  Not 
> knowledgeable at all on the itanic.
> 
> I believe Steve recently mentioned some available used itanics.  Maybe get one 
> to aid in whatever you're doing.

Nice ideas.  Not my money that would be being spent.  There isn't enough storage attachment capacity to do disk backups as described (there are three staging disks, they are backed up to every night, but they are not full safe images, so we're going to keep them safe and separate but they are not the safety copy needed).  Honestly, don't know why because we tested backup parameters, RMS parameters,, disk init parameters to exhaustion, and asked HP for help, and chose what gave us the fastest backups, and the disk backups are just not that much faster than tape on this system.  Its all Compaq universal disk U320 15Krpm SCSI (except for the internal SAS system disk mirrorset), with the mirror pairs on different channels and the backup staging disks on a third channel.  

We'll do what we can.