Installing and Managing HP-UX on Boot Disks Greater than 2TB with LVM Layout

Abstract

Starting HP-UX 11i v3 March 2013 Update release, the maximum boot disk size supported with LVM boot

layout has been enhanced from 2 Terabytes (TB) to 16 TB on HP Integrity systems. This means that HP-UX

can now be installed on disks up to 16 TB in size with LVM boot layout.

This white paper contains specific details on installation of HP-UX on boot disks > 2 TB, administering such

boot disks, limitations, and recommended practices.

Audience

The document is intended for system administrators who want to install HP-UX on boot disks > 2 TB and

manage such boot disks. It is assumed that the reader has a basic knowledge of LVM and HP-UX

installation.

Overview

HP-UX can now be installed on disks that are greater than 2 TB using LVM layout on HP Integrity

Systems. As hard disk sizes are getting bigger, this enhancement brings the ability to HP-UX to boot over

such big disks. Also this enhancement enables you to create a bigger RAID5 volume, that can exceed 2 TB,

by combining multiple internal disks using the internal “Smart Array” RAID controller (available with select

Integrity systems).

Note

The disk space requirement for HP-UX installation is as little as 30 GB as stated in

“HP-UX 11i v3 Installation and Update Guide” (available at

http://www.hp.com/go/hpux-core-docs). Even with the disk capacity necessary

for HP-UX including additional software, logs and crash dumps, the total

requirement will not exceed 1 TB. However when the system internal disks are

bigger than 2 TB, this enhancement is necessary to boot HP-UX over such big

disks.

The supported disk types include internal disks, internal HBA RAIDed disks and SAN disks.

This new boot enhancement has been added to LVM starting with Volume group version 2.2 from March

2013 release onwards. See

Table 1 for current boot disk size limits associated with various boot layouts.

Table 1. Boot disk size limits

HP-UX 11i v3 OE Update

Maximum supported boot disk size

HP Integrity Systems

HP 9000 systems

(PA RISC)

LVM boot layout

VxVM and

Whole Disk boot

layout

All layouts

Prior to March 2011

1 TB

2 TB

March 2011 and higher

2 TB

March 2013 and higher

16 TB*

2 TB