HP-UX CSE(c) Official Study Guide and Desk Reference
Authors: Keenan C.
Published year: 2006
Pages: 10-12/434
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Acknowledgments

I hope you enjoy the book as much as I have enjoyed writing it. This book would not have been possible without the help of a number of people who I would like to thank here and now.

Firstly and most importantly is my wife Caroline who has put up with more than anyone should every have to! To my mother Margaret I can only be in awe at the way she has coped with me over the years . To my father Charles; thank you for being there when I needed you (we are so alike it's almost frightening!). To my brother Michael and my sister Dona I can never tell them how much I love them.

To the inspirational Barry "mind my legs" and the loving Rita "not lasagna again" Ellis who should be so proud of their two glorious daughters: Amanda, who along with Neil will grace us with a new baby in the near future and Caroline my wife.

To my many friends and family who have been a constant source of support and encouragement.

I next have to thank some technical people from both the world of HP-UX and from Prentice Hall.

As HP-UX was my first love I will thank everyone who allowed me to use and access a myriad of equipment in order to perform the necessary tasks and demonstrations throughout the book, especially Tony Gard and his team in the HP UK Education Services Organization for the loan of a vast array of kit. Thanks to Melvyn Burnard and Steve Robinson of the HP UK Response Centre for allowing me to destroy and (hopefully) rebuild their kit over the course of many months. To the many others who allowed me to either use their resources or allowed me to pick their brains along the way, thanks is never enough.

From the editing side of the story I would like to thank the team of technical editors that took my wild Scottish rantings and made them make sense; specifically (and in no order) Fiona Monteath, Melvyn Burnard, Steve Robinson, Bret Strong and Emil Valez. From Prentice Hall I would like to thank Jill Harry and Mary Sudul who took the technical mumbo-jumbo and made it publishable. To Dr. John and Jane Sharp, both close friends who gave me very sound advice on how to tackle the challenge of writing this book; the cheque is (and hopefully lost!) in the post.

I would also like to thank the Huddersfield Technical Support Team; specifically Stephen, Jeff, Paul, Ewar and Philip, and their support organization; Laura, Julie, Linda, Gina and Janice. All of who have saved me in one technical sense or another over the period of writing this book.

To anyone else who I have not specifically thanked then I apologize but you know that I am eternally grateful and am always thinking of you.

To you the reader I thank you for having the courage to part with your hard earned cash to, delve into my world; swim around for a while, take in the scenery , but most of all enjoy yourself!

     

Part ONE: Managing HP-UX Servers

The day-to-day management of HP-UX servers is a complicated enough task. When you throw into the equation partitions, SANs, different volume management tools, crashdump analysis, performance, and tuning life just gets much more interesting . In this section, we go beyond the "normal" day-to-day HP-UX administration and discover new technological challenges and opportunities.


     

Chapter ONE. An Introduction to Your Hardware

Chapter Syllabus

1.1 Key Server Technologies

1.2 Processor Architecture

1.3 Virtual Memory

1.4 The IO Subsystem

1.5 The Big Picture

1.6 Before We Begin

The job of an advanced HP-UX administrator is not an easy one. New products are always being launched that claim to be the panacea to all our day-to-day problems of managing large, complex HP-UX installations. Part of our job is being able to analyze these products and come to a conclusion whether all the hype is truly justified. Sometime ago, I was involved in a Job-Task-Analysis workshop whereby we attempted to uncover the tasks that an advanced HP-UX administrator performed in order to manage HP-UX-based systems. The immediate problem was to keep the discussions within the parameters bounded by just HP-UX. There are subtle boundaries where you start to get into areas such as Web administration, interoperability with other operating systems, multi-vendor SAN administration, HP Openview products, and a whole list of other topics that some of us get involved with in our day-to-day working lives where HP-UX is possibly only one facet of our real jobs. In the end, our workshop distilled a list of tasks summarized here:

  • Managing HP-UX Servers

  • Installing, Updating, and Recovery

  • Advanced Networking

  • High Availability Clustering

  • HP-UX Security Administration

These topics form the basic structure around which this book is formed . Within each topic are many and varied topics, some of which may be new to us. Two key concepts that run throughout the book are high availability and performance . These two concepts have had an influence on every aspect of HP-UX from partitioned servers to volume management, to networking and high availability clusters. Regardless of whether we are using a new breed of servers, collectively known as partitioned servers , these two concepts form a nucleus of concerns for all the core tasks of today's HP-UX administrator. Throughout this book, we have these concepts at the forefront of our minds. The business demands that our HP-UX servers are put under dictate that they must perform at their peak with no (or very little) perceived drop in availability. These demands put fresh and exciting challenges in front of us. We must embrace these new challenges and technologies if we are to succeed in today's IT landscape. As Certified System Engineers, we are being looked on as technology advocates within our IT departments. An advocate must be able to analyze, filter, recommend, implement, support, and defend key decisions on why advanced IT technologies are employed. To that end, we must understand how these key technologies work and how they interact with the needs of the business within which they operate . We look in detail at these key technologies through demonstration-led examples. I use live systems to demonstrate how to implement these key technologies. For example I use a PA-RISC Superdome server to demonstrate partitioning. On the same system, I demonstrate how we can turn a traditional LVM-based Operating System into a system that boots under the control of VxVM. We use the same systems to discuss key performance- related technologies such as Processor Sets, Process Resource Manager, and WorkLoad Manager. I run the relevant commands and capture the output. The idea is to provide a job-aid including real-life examples, but at the same time to discuss the theory behind the practical, in order to provide the detail that you need to pass the certification exam that will make you a Certified Systems Engineer.

HP-UX CSE(c) Official Study Guide and Desk Reference
Authors: Keenan C.
Published year: 2006
Pages: 10-12/434
Buy this book on amazon.com >>