Mt Xia: Technical Consulting Group

Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery / High Availability
Data Center Automation / Audit Response / Audit Compliance

Additional documents of interest

  • Successful Business Continuity - Part 1 - Users and Groups
    This article was published in the April 2005 issue of AIX Update magazine and discusses system administration needs and requirements oriented around users and groups. The overall emphasis of this series of articles is for implementation of enterprise wide unique identifiers for a variety of parameters, such as user names, group names, UID and GID numbers.
  • Successful Business Continuity - Part 2 - Machine and Host Names
    This article was published in the May 2005 issue of AIX Update magazine and discusses naming structures for machines, systems, adapters, and aliases. The overall emphasis of this series of articles is for implementation of enterprise wide unique identifiers for a variety of parameters.
  • Successful Business Continuity - Part 3 - Volume Names
    This article was published in the December 2005 issue of AIX Update magazine and discusses naming structures for volume groups, logical volumes, log logical volumes, directory mount points, etc. The overall emphasis of this series of articles is for implementation of enterprise wide unique identifiers for a variety of parameters.
  • Successful Business Continuity - Part 4 - MQ Series, Startup/Shutdown Scripts, Error Processing
    This article was published in the April 2006 issue of AIX Update magazine and discusses how to implement AIX in an environment dedicated to business continuity. The topic of this article is the assignment of MQ Series queue names and aliases, resource group startup and shutdown script names (Application startup/shutdown script names), error logging, and error notification.
  • Successful Business Continuity - Part 5 - Miscellaneous topics
    This article was published in the August 2006 issue of AIX Update magazine and discusses how to implement AIX in an environment dedicated to business continuity. A variety of topics is discussed in this article including automated documentation generation and management.
  • Automated Microcode Management System
    One of the most difficult administration tasks in an AIX environment is attempting to keep the firmware and microcode up-to-date. Mt Xia has devised an automated method of gathering the Microcode information, determining which microcode needs to be updated, generating reports, and uploading the required microcode updates to each individual system.
  • Calculating the size of a Virtual Processor
    This document describes the algorithms used to calculate the size of a virtual processor when using shared processors in an LPAR. The IBM documentation describes how to calculate CPU utilization, NOT how to size for configuration, this document clarifies this process. A description of the HMC input fields for the processor tab is included.
  • Basics of Partition Load Manager Setup
    This presentation was provided by Ron Barker from IBM regarding the PLM Basic setup.
  • ppt
  • pdf
  • Volume Group Name Standards

    This document describes the standards for assigning AIX Volume Group (VG) names. A single standard has been developed for use in standalone, High Availability, and Disaster Recovery environments. This VG naming standard provides the mechanism to assign enterprise wide unique names to all AIX VG's and will eliminate naming conflicts in the event of a manual or automated failover, or if multiple instances of an application are running on a single server.

    To assign enterprise wide unique VG names, the system administrator must first define the resource groups names. Once the resource group names have been defined, then a VG name may be defined based on the resource group name.

    A single system may contain multiple resource groups, and typically there will be one VG defined per resource group. However, a resource group may contain several VG's, depending upon the requirements of the application.


    To define a VG name, obtain the 8 character resource group name, then add a 2 digit volume group sequence number that will uniquely identify the VG, followed by the characters "vg". The VG name will always end with the characters "vg".

    The VG name shall consist of exactly 12 characters with the following structure:

    ApplicationCode + Environment + Function + Company + Sequence ID + VG Sequence ID + "vg"
         3 char     +    1 char   +  1 char  +  2 char +   1 char    +      2 char    + 2 char
    

    As an example, a resource group named "egaapmx0", may have multiple associated VG's:

    RG Name
    Component
    VG Sequence
    Identifier
    LV Identifier VG Name
    egaapmx0 00 vg egaapmx000vg
    egaapmx0 01 vg egaapmx001vg
    egaapmx0 02 vg egaapmx002vg


    Each VG also requires a system or cluster wide unique Major Number. A unique major number can be generated using the following algorithm:

    MajorNbr=$( print "${VGNAME}" | sum -o | awk '{ print $1 }' )
    


    To reiterate, before creating a VG, first establish an enterprise wide unique resource group name, a VG name, and a major number. Then create the VG.

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