Friday, February 29, 2008

VxVM upgrade - In a nutshell

Upgrading Veritas Volume Manager depends very much on what version we have currently on the system. Recently, I upgraded VxVM on variety of versions of VxVM (3.2/ 3.5/ 4.0).

Important Note: Veritas provides one script/utility "preputil" which can be run before hand to make sure if the system has all the necessary patch levels. If not, it suggests the patches and versions to be installed before trying to upgrade the VxVM.

Upgrading 3.2 and 3.5 to 5.0 is bit different. Here is what I did:
1) Broke the root mirror and kept one disk out from this process (just as backup)
2) Unistalled old version of VxVM in target disk
3) Installed new version of VxVM using "installer" script.
4) Rebooted the system
5) Installed MP1 using "installmp" script
6) Rebooted the system
License key will be needed for VxVM 5.0 because it is different for older (3.2 and 3.5) versions.
Booom..... done!

Upgrading 4.0 to 5.0 is fairly easy. Here is what I did:
1) Ran "installer" script and selected "I" (install/upgrade option)
2) Rebooted the system
3) Ran "installmp" script to install Maintenance pack 1
4) rebooted the system. Done.
License key of VxVM 4.0 and 5.0 is same. At least in my case, it was not needed.
One good thing about 4.0 -> 5.0 upgrade is that it does everything by itself (not a detailed upgrade).

Installation/upgradation of VxVM 5.0 takes about 1 - 1.5 hours.
Installation of MP1 also takes about 1 hour (within 1 hour)
If patch cluster is needed to be installed, it further takes about 1.5 - 2 hours depending upon number of patches required by system.

Also, important thing to consider while scheduling downtime is:
1) Reboot time of system (at least 3 reboots needed)
2) consider the installation time of each and add those +/- 30% of time. :-)

So,..... all set for a future VxVM upgrade!

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