| 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. |
