Interface Card Critical Resource Analysis(CRA) Whitepaper for HP-UX 11i v3

SUMMARY

Critical Resource Analysis (CRA) provides usage analysis for I/O resources during destructive

operations, such as online PCI card replacement and deletion, lun or lunpath removal, and during

unload of an interface card driver. The complete CRA framework consists of multiple subsystem CRA

modules, and one infrastructure CRA module. The infrastructure CRA module provides basic

functionality and co-ordination between the subsystem CRA modules. During analysis, the

infrastructure CRA module interacts with and queries each subsystem CRA module through a well-

defined interface. For a given set of I/O components, these subsystem specific CRA modules perform

usage analysis specific to their subsystems, and report any potential impacts. The infrastructure CRA

module collates the usage analysis reports from all the subsystem CRA modules to provide a

combined CRA report for the system.

This white paper provides an in-depth account of the reports generated by Critical Resource Analysis

(CRA) for various configurations and scenarios on a system installed with the HP-UX 11iv3 operating

system. The paper also discusses various recommendations to safely perform the intended operation

for each of the described scenarios. These recommendations will help a system administrator to deal

with situations when an operation, that may need appropriate precaution to be taken, needs to be

performed on the system.

This whitepaper is primarily targeted at the HP-UX 11iv3 operating environment. Though it may have

some scenarios common with HP-UX 11iv2, this document is not intended for HP-UX 11i v2 and

earlier releases.

The rest of this document assumes HP-UX 11iv3 operating environments.