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

DRD Administration
Dynamic Root Disk (DRD) supports boot disks of size greater than 2TB from version A.3.12 which is
installed by default with HP-UX 11i v3 March 2013 release update. There is no change in DRD
administration process when dealing with such bigger boot disks.
Refer to
Table 3 for DRD behavior when various combinations of boot disk and clone disk sizes are used.
Table 3. DRD behavior with boot/clone disks of various sizes
Boot
Disk size
Clone
Disk size
DRD Version :
Prior to A.3.12 version
DRD Version :
A.3.12 or
higher
Remarks
>2 TB >2 TB N/A (>2TB boot disk cannot
exist prior to this release)
Supported Without any limitations.
<2 TB >2 TB Unsupported but still DRD clone
will succeed
Supported Clone disk usage capacity is
capped max 2TB and appropriate
message will be echoed from
A.3.12 onwards.
>2 TB <2 TB N/A (>2TB boot disk cannot
exist prior to this release)
Supported Not recommended by DRD. But
cloning goes through without any
issues as long as the clone disk
doesn’t run out of space while
copying data from the boot disk.
Post-install: Extending System volumes (root/swap/dump)
After the cold installation of HP-UX onto disks bigger than 2TB, you may see lot of free space left on root
volume group. You can utilize the free space either by creating new logical volumes or by extending system
volumes such as root, swap and dump. As shown in
Table2, Ignite-UX allows to create system volume with
certain limis in their sizes. However, post-installation the system volumes can be expanded to go beyond
those limits. LVM allows you to increase the system volume sizes up to 16 TB.
Note
You can calculate the free space available in root volume group by multiplying
‘Free PE’ and ‘PE Size’ values shown in ‘vgdisplay’ command.
# vgdisplay vg00 | grep -e "PE Size" -e "Free PE"
PE Size (Mbytes) 4
Free PE 110574
There is no difference in steps when extending system volumes on disks bigger than 2TB. It can be done in
the same way as done on smaller boot disks. Try utilizing the free space by creating new logical volumes
rather than expanding system volumes unless there are definite needs. Refer to “HP-UX System
Administrator’s Guide: Logical Volume Management” (
http://www.hp.com/go/hpux-LVM-VxVM-docs) for
steps to create new logical volumes or to expand existing system volumes.