Migrating vPar Systems to Integrity VM

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Migrating Virtual Partition (vPar) systems to

Integrity Virtual Machines

A white paper from HP

Introduction...................................................................................................................................2

Planning the Migration....................................................................................................................2

Planning the VM Host..................................................................................................................2

Storage for the VM Host...........................................................................................................2

Networking for the VM Host......................................................................................................3

Collecting the Systems’ Configuration Details...................................................................................3

Collect the network (LAN) information for each vPar......................................................................3

Collect and Save Mass Storage Configuration..............................................................................4

CPU and Memory Information....................................................................................................5

Removing the Virtual Partition Configuration........................................................................................6

Installing and Configuring the Virtual Machines...................................................................................7

Integrity VM Host Configuration.....................................................................................................7

Virtual Switch Configuration..........................................................................................................8

Individual Virtual Machine Configuration ........................................................................................9

Virtual Machine Creation and Configuration................................................................................9

Boot the System in Logical Volume Maintenance Mode ................................................................10

Reconfigure the Root Volume Group..........................................................................................11

Recover Storage Configuration ................................................................................................ 12

Summary.....................................................................................................................................13

For more information.....................................................................................................................13

Summary of content (13 pages)

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Migrating Virtual Partition (vPar) systems to Integrity Virtual Machines A white paper from HP Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 2 Planning the Migration .................................................................................................................... 2 Planning the VM Host ..........................................................................................................
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Introduction In some consolidation scenarios, it makes sense to transition an existing, physical Integrity Server or hard partition (nPar) from running HP Virtual Partitions to hosting Integrity Virtual Machines. Due to the flexibility of these products, this can be done without reconfiguring the operating system installation and reinstalling all of the software. In fact, the same mass storage can be used by the new technology. This white paper provides step-by-step instructions on how to accomplish this.
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Networking for the VM Host Any one of the physical network interface cards (NICs) on the Integrity server may be used for the VM Host’s network configuration, including any of those used by the virtual partitions. Should you select a NIC that a virtual partition was using, it may be prudent to select the virtual partition with the lightest network load. This is due to the fact that this physical NIC will probably have to be shared between the VM Host and the VM replacing that virtual partition.
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Collect and Save Mass Storage Configuration Preserving the mass storage configuration across the transition will make things much smoother. Fortunately, the vPars product is architected so that HW paths are consistent between the vPars on a system (nPar) and the system itself. Thus, the HW path shown inside a vPar will be the same HW path after all the vPars are removed. Three basic sets of information should be collected (well, four actually but one is a special case of another).
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technical support for advice in addressing your particular configuration. (Note that lvlnboot will fail if you did not specify a ‘boot’ volume group.) Key to Smooth Transition – Collecting Root Volume Group Configuration Collecting and saving the root volume group information is critical to an easy transition from virtual partitions to virtual machines (and vice-versa). Collect the volume group map and physical volume information.
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Removing the Virtual Partition Configuration In each vPar, make sure the AUTO file is set to boot HP-UX (/stand/vmunix) rather than the vPar monitor (/stand/vpmon). Then disable the autoboot parameter so that when the virtual partition software is removed, the OS doesn’t try to restart after the kernel is rebuilt. To do this, proceed as follows for each vPar: 1. Identify the HW path of the boot device for the vPar # setboot 0/0/0/2/0.6.0 2.
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. Now you can remove the virtual partition software which will rebuild the kernel and require a reboot. However with the autoboot set to OFF, the OS will be halted # swremove –x autoreboot=true T1335BC 8. The above steps 1-7 must be done on each vPar and verified that each vPar has been halted. If you have come in through the MP, then you can use the cntl-a sequence as usual to cycle through the vPars to accomplish the steps.
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Virtual Switch Configuration Now that the Integrity VM software is installed, we will need to set up the virtual networking for use by the virtual machines hosted there. For each subnet and gateway used by the virtual partitions, a LAN must be identified on the VM Host that is connected to that subnet and gateway. The simplest approach to this is to define a virtual switch for each of the LANs used by the virtual partitions.
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Individual Virtual Machine Configuration With the VM Host set up and virtual networking ready, the virtual machines are now ready to be created, configured, and booted. Virtual Machine Creation and Configuration For each virtual machine (i.e., each virtual partition being converted to a virtual machine), proceed as follows: 1.
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In particular, be sure the boot disk is added and should be added first for convenience in identification later. For our earlier example, the HW path of the boot disk was 0/1/1/0.1.0. Using ioscan on the VM Host, we can identify the device filename corresponding to this path: # ioscan -funC disk Class I H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Description ======================================================================= disk 0 0/0/2/0.0.0.
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Reconfigure the Root Volume Group Once the system is up in single-user mode, you need to reconstruct the root volume group. This is accomplished by proceeding as follows: 1. Create the device filenames # insf –e 2. Identify the device filename of the boot device Class I H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Description ======================================================================= disk 8 0/0/0/0.0.
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7. Activate the root volume group # vgchange -a y /dev/vg00 Activated volume group Volume group "/dev/vg00" has been successfully changed. 8. Manually cleanup and prepare the LVM logical volumes # lvrmboot -r /dev/vg00 lvrmboot: Unable to Remove Swap Logical Volume Volume Group configuration for /dev/vg00 has been /etc/lvmconf/vg00.conf # lvlnboot -b /dev/vg00/lvol1 Volume Group configuration for /dev/vg00 has been /etc/lvmconf/vg00.
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Summary The steps provided here will enable you to transition an Integrity system from running vPars to hosting Integrity Virtual Machines. The steps necessary to do the reverse transition are very similar in general and identical for maintaining disk and volume configurations across the transition. When you complete the transition from vPars to VMs as outlined above, you will not be sharing hardware very efficiently.