Re: Beginnning to think about VMware and SCO 5.0.5
- From: Bill Campbell <bill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:45:25 -0700
On Wed, Jun 25, 2008, Steve M. Fabac, Jr. wrote:
I have not touched VMWare and don't know where to
start to investigate this issue. So I thought I'd
post it here where several users have implemented various
systems for their own use or client's to solicit recommendations
on suitable system configurations to replace the client's
current servers.
The client running SCO 5.0.5 Enterprise on two
servers, one is the live production and the other is
a "hot spare."
These are identical SuperMicro PIII 1.4Ghz machines with
512M RAM and a DPT 3754U2 RAID controller with 16M cache RAM,
and two 36G SCA 10K disks in RAID1.
Both machines are backed up each night to their own Sony
SDT-9000 DAT drive. And the application data directories and
user home directories are copied from the live server to the
backup server before the tape backup runs.
Charged with upgrading this hardware, it makes sense to plan
to migrate to a single CPU system board hosting a 2-3 GHz dual
or quad core Xeon CPU. I would then replace the full length
DPT RAID controllers with a current technology RAID controller
either SATA or SAS with suitable 76G to 146G hard drives in RAID1
Clearly, moving both live and backup systems to modern hardware
will require upgrading the SCO 5.0.5 OS to either 5.0.7 or
SCO Openserver 6.0 on both machines.
The need to update the OS is not so clear. We are running running SCO
5.0.6a on VMware server with no problems. The host system is a 1U
Supermicro box with dual 2000 Opterons, 4GB of RAM (room to expand to at
16GB), 3ware 9550 SATA controller, running CentOS 5.1 x86_64. We have
several Linux VMs running on this system for development work in addition
to the OSR5 system. All access to the SCO system is via secure shell (e.g.
we don't have to worry about serial connections), and printing to network
devices so no parallel worries.
The SCO system is installed using IDE emulation for the disk, which Bela
has said makes life considerably easier.
The OSR5 system is considerably faster in this environment than it was
running on its own system with SCSI drives.
We do backups to removable hard drives or backup systems using rsync rather
than tape. Using rsync minimizes the amount of data transferred across the
network making it a viable option for off-site network backups.
What's the current opinion on a solid system that will run either
5.0.7 or 6.0 and have drivers for a RAID controller?
An alternative strategy I'd like to offer the client is a configuration
using VMWare to Virtualize both the primary and backup 5.0.5
servers.
I've checked the VMWare web site and I see VMW products ranging
in price from $3624 to $21824 and I have no clue on how to
specify the product the client needs.
Many people recommend using their free VMware server product which is (a)
free, and (b) runs on a wider variety of hardware.
Please comment on the following:
1) One or two hardware platforms? The client desires to maintain
hardware redundancy so that if the primary box goes down, we can
switch operations to the secondary box.
This is particularly easy with VMware as one can copy the VM's directory to
a new machine, and not have to worry about hardware configuration.
2) Then should I use one platform to host the primary (live) 5.0.5
instance and a second VMWare platform hosting a running instance
of the current backup server? This continues to require we take
the time to copy the application data from the primary instance
to the backup instance so that the backup instance is ready to
go should the primary box fail.
Rsync is your friend here. Another option might be to make a nightly
snapshot with the VMware system, and copy the snapshot file to the backup
machine. The backup machine could have the VMware VM ``powered off'', and
you could simply start it by reverting to the backup snapshot.
3) Or, not bother to keep a backup 5.0.5 server running on the redundant
VMWare host but just migrate the live 5.0.5 image from the primary
VMWare host to the backup VMWare host as needed? Can that even be
done?
4) How do we back up the live 5.0.5 server? Continue to use a dedicated
SONY tape drive and BackupEdge running in the live 5.0.5 instance?
Or is backup performed at the VMWare level? Is that reliable?
I would start by installing SCO 5.0.6a on a new VMware VM with appropriate
RAM and HD resources. Install all the appropriate SCO updates to this VM,
then make a snapshot of it with all updates intact. You might want to make
a copy of the VM directory, leaving the original as a starting point for
later VMs, the work with the copy. Assign IP address(es) allowing access
to the new system.
You can make snapshots at various places in the process, giving you a fall-
back in case something goes wrong. You can then revert to the snapshot to
re-do mistakes. I do this extensively when testing software installations
or updates.
Make all the appropriate users and groups using /tcb/bin/ap to dump and
load the information from the current live system.
We generally use rsync to copy all the existing user and application
directories from the live system to the new one, expecting to do a final
rsync just before the new system goes live.
Install the necessary application software in the VM.
5) where is the UPS communication and monitoring software installed?
under 5.0.5 or VMWare? Do we shutdown the 5.0.5 instance and then
shutdown VMWare and power off the UPS to preserve the UPS battery?
The SCO system would need to be able to initiate a shutdown based on UPS
events as VMware has provisions to shut down running VMs, but I don't think
that works well with SCO. We depend on the UPS only to keep the system
going long enough to switch to generator power.
I doubt that there's much power difference with VMs running or powered off.
Bill
--
INTERNET: bill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/ PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
Voice: (206) 236-1676 Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820
Fax: (206) 232-9186
Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it's not one bit better
than the government we got for one third the money twenty years ago.
Will Rogers
.
- References:
- Beginnning to think about VMware and SCO 5.0.5
- From: Steve M. Fabac, Jr.
- Beginnning to think about VMware and SCO 5.0.5
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