[Info-vax] 'Partitioning' raid controller for VMS on Integrity

[Dave Froble]

On 9/9/2021 7:48 PM, Rich Jordan wrote:

> Thanks to all who responded.  The older system has 18 drives providing nine mirrored volumes, plus another 6 mirrored 'universal' drives proving backup staging space.  They are hoping that we can put in an RX-2800 with eight larger SAS drives (which even RAID'ed will add up to much more space) but due to the age and complexity of the software involved we really want to keep the same number of spindles/volumes visible to VMS.   If possible without a second controller and more drives in a shelf.  If we have to merge more than one or two disks together it will seriously increase the complexity of acceptance testing; everything should be clearly controlled via logicals but a lot of hands wrote a lot of software over 30+ years, so dropping to four large mirrorsets is not going to happen.  I know we can do the work, but the time and cost...
>
> We have an RX2660 we use for testing here; it has a P410i with the advanced license and some 1.2TB SAS drives (and four smaller ones).  I can make an ADG array with the four large drives in ORCA, but it does not provide any means of 'breaking that down' into smaller volumes to pass to VMS.  I tried (once, so maybe missed something) to use MSA$UTIL from the DVD boot of HP VMS V8.4, and it also doesn't seem to have options to break down that large disk (which is already visible to VMS).  So if a P410 can do this (is a P410i different in that regard?) I should be able to test on the 2660 and confirm that it can be done on the potential RX-2800.
>
> I'm installing VMS kit on a local disk temporarily so I can see if the MSA$UTIL options are different when booting from a live disk. I've got the appropriate update kits available to install
>
> If SAUPDATE from the UEFI console is also capable of doing the volume setups then I'm going to try to find that kit/download somewhere; HPe moved it all behind paywalls.  I should have RX2620 firmware kits from when ours was under support but I doubt I have that for the 2660 (which was a customer letting us have it back when they retired); no idea if we could use one kit for just that one utility on a different box.
>
> Thanks again
>

I don't know how your system(s) are configured, so this may not be helpful.

We use those "dratted logicals" to define disks.  So we can move things 
around, just with the logicals.

Say:

Disk0
Disk1
Disk2
Disk3

Are current.  However if we wanted to replace both Disk2 and Disk3 with 
one larger disk, all we would do is to have both logical names Disk2 and 
Disk3 both point to the new larger disk.

There could still be issues.  Say the old disks have identical directory 
names that are used for different purposes.  Or other unknown to me issues.

If you're not using logical names in a like manner, then perhaps your 
solutions will be a bit more difficult.

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc.      E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
Vanderbilt, PA  15486