topic Re: MSA1500 +Single Path servers +Active / Active FW in MSA Storage

MSA1500 +Single Path servers +Active / Active FW

Mark Matthews — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:31:22 GMT

Hi All,

Is it possible to update my customers MSA1500 controllers (MSA1000s) from ver 5.20 A/P to ver 7.00 A/A when they only have single path servers?
The ver 7.00 blurb states performance benefits, and its the pure fact that its a lot newer FW than the A/P version...
Will it work, or do the servers all need to be dual path first?

Thanks for any info

Re: MSA1500 +Single Path servers +Active / Active FW

Martin Smoral — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:25:46 GMT

Mark,
if all your servers are single pathed and you have a single MSA controller installed, then i would stay at 5.20. I would only go to the 7.00a/a if you have dual MSA controllers and dual Switches and some dual pathed servers. In this case the single pathed servers may lose access to their luns if their controller/Switch/Hba fails and all their luns move to the other path.
regards,
Martin

Re: MSA1500 +Single Path servers +Active / Active FW

Mark Matthews — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 09:10:35 GMT

Thanks Martin,

sorry forgot to mention there ARE 2 MSA controllers and 2 switches installed.
The customers original plan was to dual path everything but it fell by the wayside a little.
They currently have 5 servers on the SAN, 4 single path, 1 dual path, but this is due to go single path soon.

I just needed to know if it would all still work with the ver 7.00 FW before I tried it (and killed it!)

Thanks
Mark...

Re: MSA1500 +Single Path servers +Active / Active FW

James Muell — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:02:43 GMT

I agree with MartinS.

While v.7.00 is active active and single HBA host(s) could be configured one controller or the other (something ive never tried). You would certainly need to SSP all the hosts if not use zoning. Then too...no failover possible.