LVM 2.0 POC Installation

[vladimir_kogan4]

Dear LVM Gurus.

We are going to install SAP NW 7.4 system on LVM managed machine to learn
the functionality and perform POC sessions for customers.

My question is:

Can I install the system that will be managed by LVM before I obtain and configure
Storage and VM adaptors, and add the system to LVM later?

Is there any specifics steps for installation of new LVM managed systems?

Regards

Vladimir Kogan

[edmund_hfele2 · Accepted solution]

Dear Vladimir,

yes, you can install the new "SAP NW LVM managed" system first (and eventually manage it partially e.g. for start/ stop via SAP Host Agent and SAP Instance Agent) before exploiting all the Storage- and Virtualization related use-cases. Of course some customizing and configuration steps/ discovery activities may need to be repeated if you want to extend the scope to the "full" solution later on.

And right from the beginning you should install the "managed" system having the full scope for the final PoC use-cases in mind (all prerequisites for "adaptive" or "virtual" installation, e.g. consider virtual hostnames, central user management, storage and filesystem layout, ...)

Regards

Edmund

[BTW, eventually (even if you've got a fully different HW/SW stack) you may find some usefull hints in the document http://www-03.ibm.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/WebIndex/WP102155

describing a SAP NW LVM sample implementation for an IBM environment ...] 

[vladimir_kogan4 · Accepted solution]

Dear Edmund .

Thank you for the explanations.

Can you please clarify, what does it mean Virtual Hostname in the LVM world?

For  example :

Is this naming proposal must?

I have define my own hostname at HyperV. Is it enough?

My environment in Windows - MSSQL

Thank you

Regards

Vladimir

[edmund_hfele2 · Accepted solution]

Dear Vladimir,

the virtual Hostname allows to "decouple" the SAP Instance(s) from the virtual machine -

implementation is definitely required e.g. for all the "provisioning-like" Use-Cases (SAP System Copy, SAP System Refresh, SAP DI Provisioning). 

The naming proposal is an example, and you can adapt that to your environment: From my experience  clients often built their naming conventions based on instance type [db|ci|cs|di],  SID, network, and organisational informations. Those virtual hostnames then need to be either pre-registered in DNS, or SAP LVM has the functionality of dynamic name resolution updates in a (Linux or Windows) DNS Server.

I had a look into SAP Note 1843134 - seems that the Hyper-V adapter for SAP LVM currently supports the following VM operations:

a) Activate

b) Deactivate (OS Shutdown)

c) Deactivate (Power Off)

d) Suspend

e) Pause

f) Provisioning a virtual machine from a template

For those it may be sufficient to start w/o virtual hostnames (and have the SAP instances bound to the VM), but if you have provisioning use-cases in mind for the future you should implement the virtual hostnames for the SAP instances ...

best regards

Edmund