about 4 years ago we purchased an old a5000 and had it installed by our
var... He carved it up into raid 5 groups and everything was good
until sun eol's the a5000 last year. Last week a disk went bad in it
and vvm let us remove it but when we tried to put a disk back into the
raid 5 group we got a "License" error.

After much investigation we learned that sun could not supply us with a
license Eval or purchased because the equipment was eol'd (end of life)
and not supported any more. Veritas basically said the same thing but
gave us the new 4.1 vvm and an eval key and said good luck %-(

I'm not to comfortable going ahead installing vvm 4.1 on this system
(old E3500)especially when we are going to replace it by the end of the
summer. I just need to get a disk put into that raid group.

Hopefully somebody has an old eval key hanging around...

Any help will be greatly appreciated

Send any responses to cohiba51@yahoo.com - thanks

In article <1116253419.630350.277790@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups .com>,
"Shredder" <cohiba51@yahoo.com> wrote:

> about 4 years ago we purchased an old a5000 and had it installed by our
> var... He carved it up into raid 5 groups and everything was good
> until sun eol's the a5000 last year. Last week a disk went bad in it
> and vvm let us remove it but when we tried to put a disk back into the
> raid 5 group we got a "License" error.
>
> After much investigation we learned that sun could not supply us with a
> license Eval or purchased because the equipment was eol'd (end of life)
> and not supported any more. Veritas basically said the same thing but
> gave us the new 4.1 vvm and an eval key and said good luck %-(
>
> I'm not to comfortable going ahead installing vvm 4.1 on this system
> (old E3500)especially when we are going to replace it by the end of the
> summer. I just need to get a disk put into that raid group.
>
> Hopefully somebody has an old eval key hanging around...
>
> Any help will be greatly appreciated

I seem to recall that the A5000 was supposed to be automatically
recognized and would authorize VXvm to run on SUN boxes. Are you saying
that this is broken now? I used to recall that V3 "just worked", albeit
some patches were required. If you A5000 is on contract and you've
already paid them money to support it, should Sun be working on getting
this working for you? Have you escalated this to a regional or district
manager?

IANAL (nor do I play one on TV), so correct me if I'm wrong. Wouldn't
"lending" you _my_ license key for a product that I own be a violation
of the Veritas Terms of Service?

Also since the software keys are tied to the hostid, would some of the
hostid hacks floating around the net work on a E3500?

--
DeeDee, don't press that button! DeeDee! NO! Dee...

It did work when it was installed. Sun said that it worked for 45
days. It has the standard license "photon", but that's it.

Also, i'm only asking for an "EVAL" key, which would not be tied to
any hostid, and I'm not really sure if an eval key would work or if it
has run out of time (by date).

In article <1116269725.404582.81610@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups. com>,
"Shredder" <cohiba51@yahoo.com> wrote:

> It did work when it was installed. Sun said that it worked for 45
> days. It has the standard license "photon", but that's it.
>
> Also, i'm only asking for an "EVAL" key, which would not be tied to
> any hostid, and I'm not really sure if an eval key would work or if it
> has run out of time (by date).

AFAIK, Veritas and SUN were the only ones who can issue eval keys that
expire. The ones customers get once they buy the product are node
locked using hostid on SUNs.

I'm confused here. When I've installed VxVM 3 on Solaris 7 with an
A5000 attached, I had to install the Recommended patch cluster to get it
to "see" the array and vxconfig to use _the array_. That automatic
license allowed for creating any sort of volume on the array and to
encapsulate 2 disks for the root volume. If I wanted to use VxVM on an
external SCSI box (forgot what they're called), I had to buy a full VxVM
license.

I don't remember if SUN packaged a VxVM CD with any of their server
media kits. That version may be 2.x, which won't help you. I recall
3.x came in Veritas branded boxes and SUN could generate license keys
for it.

Are you saying your VxVM license for volumes associated with the A5000
(which you supposedly have on contract) is no longer valid and that SUN
and Veritas are saying "sorry, not supported. Buy our latest product
instead."

If you're on support contract, have you contacted your district or
regional SUN support manager? What do they say? Can they help you?
You've paid to have them support this thing and there's a legal contract
saying that. Ask the manager to clarify if SUN is refusing to honor the
contract. Your call if you want to involve your legal department.

If you're not on contract, you can still use the A5000 as a JBOD.
DiskSuite or SVM on Solaris 9 should work just fine. IMO, you're SOL in
terms of support if neither SUN nor Veritas are willing to give you a
3.x license key.

You can install the 4.x license and go with that.

You can replace the device with storage that's supported. You were going
to anyway. Sun's just forcing you to this early.

You can use the array as a boat anchor or to test the local gravitation
constant.

What you do with it in this case is up to you.

--
DeeDee, don't press that button! DeeDee! NO! Dee...

Michael Vilain <vilain@spamcop.net> writes:

>
> Are you saying your VxVM license for volumes associated with the A5000
> (which you supposedly have on contract) is no longer valid and that SUN
> and Veritas are saying "sorry, not supported. Buy our latest product
> instead."

That wouldn't surprise me. We had a similar issues with Sun's L7 tape
loader with Veritas NetBackup 4.5 (licence bought with the tape). After
upgrading the machine to Solaris 10, software wouldn't work any more and I
have been told (from both sides) that I'll need to buy a newer version of
NetBackup, as our support contract doesn't include Veritas software
upgrades.

Switched to Amanda and never looked back.

Dragan

--
Dragan Cvetkovic,

To be or not to be is true. G. Boole No it isn't. L. E. J. Brouwer

!!! Sender/From address is bogus. Use reply-to one !!!

Dragan Cvetkovic wrote:
> Michael Vilain <vilain@spamcop.net> writes:
>
>
>>Are you saying your VxVM license for volumes associated with the A5000
>>(which you supposedly have on contract) is no longer valid and that SUN
>>and Veritas are saying "sorry, not supported. Buy our latest product
>>instead."
>
>
> That wouldn't surprise me. We had a similar issues with Sun's L7 tape
> loader with Veritas NetBackup 4.5 (licence bought with the tape). After
> upgrading the machine to Solaris 10, software wouldn't work any more and I
> have been told (from both sides) that I'll need to buy a newer version of
> NetBackup, as our support contract doesn't include Veritas software
> upgrades.
>
> Switched to Amanda and never looked back.
>
> Dragan
>

VxVM 4.1 will still honour photon licenses. I just got a photon for
personal use (haven't put it into use yet as I don't have my u2 with
FC-AL HBA's yet), but the release notes for VxVM says that it will
honour the liceneses from A5x00 arrays.



--
Coy Hile
hile@cse.psu.edu