Database replication to facilitate OS upgrade.

Hello, Does anyone know of or have any success using any third party products to replicate an Informix instance across two servers with different operating systems? The reason I ask is we have a 32 to 64 bit OS upgrade coming up this year. If I follow the IBM provided methodology, we will be out 12 to 14 hours doing the dbexport/unload and dbimport/load steps of this. Since it is different OS's and we want to optimize the layout of tables and indexes, HDR will not work. I will have a machine in waiting with 64bit OS and IDS v11 loaded up on it. If I could get my wish, here is what I would want to happen: I want to replicate all of the data within our OLTP database from a point in time from our 32-bit instance to a remote 64-bit instance. This would have to occur without interrupting the 32-bit instance from servicing client requests and continue to process DML. Once all the data from the point in time is on the 64-bit instance, I would want to replay all of the SQL statements that occurred on the 32-bit instance since that "point in time" onto the 64 bit instance. Slowly but surely, the difference in the data between the 64-bit and 32-bit instance would be none. Once they are completely in sync, I could take a small outage; redirect the clients to the 64-bit instance; and viola, the Cheetah running on 64-bit Linux with the minimum amount of downtime for the migration. Is it a pipe dream? I have looked around and found a few products, but nothing that appears to work properly. I had to do this same thing 2 years ago from Solaris 8 to 10 and the only avenue available was dbexport/dbimport. If we do have to take an outage, we are considering using the HPL for speed and doing any static tables before the outage, but as always, any pertinent insight or direction that anyone could provide would be appreciated.

Clancy wrote: > Hello, > Hi, yes, you cannot use HDR for this kind of migration, however, you CAN use ER (Enterprise Replication) to make the move to the 64bit server and maintain both until the new system has settled down and all users have been ported to the new server. If you must use dbexport/dbimport, consider using my dbexport/dbimport replacement package, myexport. It can unload and reload the data in parallel and can optionally use the HP Loader for the operations. It requires three other packages: Jonathan Leffler's sqlcmd package, Ravi Krishna's myonpload package (if you want to use the HPLoader options), and my dbschema replacement utility myschema from the utils2_ak package. All packages are available for download from the IIUG Software Repository and my packages are also available from the Oninit web site (www.oninit.com) where I will be posting updated source prior to release to the IIUG site as a beta site. (Coming soon: A throttle on myexport/myimport to only export/import a specified number of tables at a time in parallel mode - currently all tables are exported at once which can seriously affect other applications on the machine or which need to access the server. It also may hit OS limits on the number of child processes per parent task.) Art S. Kagel Oninit > Does anyone know of or have any success using any third party products > to replicate an Informix instance across two servers with different > operating systems? The reason I ask is we have a 32 to 64 bit OS > upgrade coming up this year. If I follow the IBM provided > methodology, we will be out 12 to 14 hours doing the dbexport/unload > and dbimport/load steps of this. Since it is different OS's and we > want to optimize the layout of tables and indexes, HDR will not work. > I will have a machine in waiting with 64bit OS and IDS v11 loaded up > on it. > If I could get my wish, here is what I would want to happen: > I want to replicate all of the data within our OLTP database from a > point in time from our 32-bit instance to a remote 64-bit instance. > This would have to occur without interrupting the 32-bit instance from > servicing client requests and continue to process DML. Once all the > data from the point in time is on the 64-bit instance, I would want to > replay all of the SQL statements that occurred on the 32-bit instance > since that "point in time" onto the 64 bit instance. Slowly but > surely, the difference in the data between the 64-bit and 32-bit > instance would be none. Once they are completely in sync, I could > take a small outage; redirect the clients to the 64-bit instance; and > viola, the Cheetah running on 64-bit Linux with the minimum amount of > downtime for the migration. > Is it a pipe dream? I have looked around and found a few products, > but nothing that appears to work properly. I had to do this same > thing 2 years ago from Solaris 8 to 10 and the only avenue available > was dbexport/dbimport. If we do have to take an outage, we are > considering using the HPL for speed and doing any static tables before > the outage, but as always, any pertinent insight or direction that > anyone could provide would be appreciated. > _______________________________________________ > Informix-list mailing list > Informix-list@iiug.org > http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list > > >

> -----Original Message----- > From: informix-list-bounces@iiug.org [mailto:informix-list- > bounces@iiug.org] On Behalf Of Clancy > Sent: Monday, March 31, 2008 2:21 PM > To: informix-list@iiug.org > Subject: Database replication to facilitate OS upgrade. > > Hello, > Does anyone know of or have any success using any third party products > to replicate an Informix instance across two servers with different > operating systems? The reason I ask is we have a 32 to 64 bit OS > upgrade coming up this year. If I follow the IBM provided > methodology, we will be out 12 to 14 hours doing the dbexport/unload > and dbimport/load steps of this. Since it is different OS's and we > want to optimize the layout of tables and indexes, HDR will not work. You said you destination OS is 64 bit Linux and that the source is "different." Does different mean Windoze or Solaris different or 32 bit Linux different? If it is also Linux (I know this will work on HP-UX, someone else will need to confirm for Linux), you may be able to do this: 1. install the 32 bit Cheetah (a guess, you also didn't say which version of IDS you were starting with) on the 64 bit server 2. Use HDR to sync the two boxes 3. onmode -yuk the old box to prevent any more transactions from occurring there 4. onmode -d standard followed by onmode -yuk on the new box 5. do an in place upgrade of the new box to 64 bit Cheetah. 6. Update stats, level 0 backup, etc. --EEM > I will have a machine in waiting with 64bit OS and IDS v11 loaded up > on it. > If I could get my wish, here is what I would want to happen: > I want to replicate all of the data within our OLTP database from a > point in time from our 32-bit instance to a remote 64-bit instance. > This would have to occur without interrupting the 32-bit instance from > servicing client requests and continue to process DML. Once all the > data from the point in time is on the 64-bit instance, I would want to > replay all of the SQL statements that occurred on the 32-bit instance > since that "point in time" onto the 64 bit instance. Slowly but > surely, the difference in the data between the 64-bit and 32-bit > instance would be none. Once they are completely in sync, I could > take a small outage; redirect the clients to the 64-bit instance; and > viola, the Cheetah running on 64-bit Linux with the minimum amount of > downtime for the migration. > Is it a pipe dream? I have looked around and found a few products, > but nothing that appears to work properly. I had to do this same > thing 2 years ago from Solaris 8 to 10 and the only avenue available > was dbexport/dbimport. If we do have to take an outage, we are > considering using the HPL for speed and doing any static tables before > the outage, but as always, any pertinent insight or direction that > anyone could provide would be appreciated. > _______________________________________________ > Informix-list mailing list > Informix-list@iiug.org > http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list