Virtual Horizons

Dave Pattern, Library Systems ManagerUniversity of Huddersfield

d.c.pattern@hud.ac.uk

Preamble

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3.0

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Background

• Horizon 7.3.4 (UK)• Sun Fire V240• Solaris 8• Sybase database held on Storage

Area Network (SAN)

Jan 2009

• Planned Easter upgrade to SAN would end support for Solaris 8 connectivity

Plan #1

• Prep replacement server with Solaris 10

• Install Horizon• Copy database(?)• Ooops… epic fail!

– IT Policy now mandates that (unless there is a strong technical reason) all new and replacement servers should be virtual

Plan #2

• Prep new virtual server with Solaris 10

• Install Horizon• Copy database(?)• Ooops… epic fail!

– Current VMware setup only supports x86 version of Solaris

– Sybase not available for x86 Solaris platform

Plan #3

• Prep new virtual server with Windows Server 2003

• Install Horizon• Migrate database

What went right?

• Downtime during data migration was low

• Faster server and increased redundancy

What went wrong?

• At 4am prompt on the following Saturday morning, Horizon fell over dead

What went wrong?

• The only scheduled task at 4am was for “upstat” (update statistics)

• Disabled “upstat” scheduled task whilst SirsiDynix Support investigated

• A few days later, Horizon died a death at 4am again…

• …maybe going virtual wasn’t such a good idea, after all!!!

So, what really happened?

• VMware server configured to take daily “snapshot” at 4am

• Reconfigured “snapshot” to exclude Sybase data partition

• Touch wood, it hasn’t happened again

What else has gone wrong?

• Nothing! Niente! Gdzie tam! пусте!

What next?

• The HIP server will need replacing soon, so we’d like to virtualise that too

Any questions?

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