cloning a system disk

From: Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply (helbig_at_astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de)
Date: 03/31/05 

Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 15:38:14 +0000 (UTC)

I've mentioned this a few times here in the past, but have never gotten
a completely satisfactory answer.

Does anyone have a fool-proof plan and/or DCL procedure for cloning a
system disk? What I want to do is use one member of a cleanly
dismounted system-disk shadow set as the system disk on another node,
then, after the nodes are up and running, add a second member to each
single-disk shadow set.

I have moved SYSUAF.DAT and all other files mentioned in
SYS$MANAGER:SYLOGICALS.TEMPLATE off the system disk, so that is not an
issue (including things like queue names etc---of course, after the
system is up and running, I might want to set up additional queues on
it).

What do I have to change before booting the new system IN THE SAME
CLUSTER? (Obviously, I will try a standalone boot first.)

Here's what I've thought of:

   o names of disk(s) for secondary page and/or swap files (MIGHT be
      different)

   o SCSNODE

   o SCSSYSTEMID

   o ALLOCLASS

   o TAPE_ALLOCLASS

   o IP address

   o IP hostname

   o complete TCPIP configuration if the name of the adapter is
   o different (not the case here)

The primary reason is to avoid repeating the installation. VMS itself I
could live with, but I don't want to re-install all layered products.

Since this is a fresh system, I don't care about historical baggage like
ACCOUNTNG.DAT, TCPIP log files etc. However, in the future, when
repeating the process after upgrading VMS and/or installing new layered
products, it would be nice to save stuff like ACCOUNTNG.DAT, TCPIP log
files etc before the cloning then put them back in place of a cloned
one. Does anyone have a complete list of such things?

Relevant Pages

  • Re: cloning a system disk
    ... > dismounted system-disk shadow set as the system disk on another node, ... VMS itself I ... > ACCOUNTNG.DAT, TCPIP log files etc. ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • Re: Shadowed System disk questions
    ... BE SURE NOT TO ADD MEMBERS TO A SYSTEM DISK SHADOW SET IN ANY STARTUP ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • Re: DFO and SET FILE/NOMOVE
    ... >> system disk. ... In other words, one must boot from, for example, the boot ... MOUNT/OVER=SHADOW and reconstruct the shadow set later. ... What about shadow sets with members on more ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • Re: expanding shadow size
    ... I have an existing shadow set by a customer. ... There are ECO kits for V7.3-2 that are relevant to dynamic volume expansion (DVE). ... There are a couple of wrinkles here, including whether this is a system disk -- if so, there's a bug in the DVE-related processing that makes it difficult to enable DVE on a system disk when using V7.3-2 distribution CD; details at the above web page -- it's fixed by an ECO kit, but you don't have that ECO on your distro CD unless you've rebuilt the CD yourself. ...
    (comp.os.vms)