topic Re: San Boot in Operating System - HP-UX

San Boot

Malvina Gooding_1 — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 08:23:38 GMT

We have setup a server running HP-UX 11 with the following hardware setup to boot from an EVA5000 SAN; an RX2620 with 2 x fibre connections to 2 x switches which in turn each have paths to both of the SAN’s HSV110 disk controllers.

HP-UX is installed along with SecurePath, when the system is up it shows four paths to the root volume group (as expected, Fibre1->Switch1->HSV1, Fibre1->Switch1->HSV2, Fibre2->Switch2->HSV1, Fibre2->Switch2->HSV2). Securepath is correctly managing this and in the event of a single fibrechannel failure the system sees the root vg through one of the other paths and continues operating.

When the system is booted the EFI boot manager ONLY sees a single path to the root volume group. If the fibre for that path is down then the boot manager never sees any of the remaining three paths.

This leaves us in the somewhat ironic position of having a machine which will work 100% reliably in the event of a fibre failure / switch crash or HSV controller failure (either using Securepath or PV links), as long as it isn’t rebooted!!!

Does anyone know how it is possible to convince the EFI Boot manager that there are multiple paths to a boot disk?

I should point out that we have tried using setboot to specify an alternate path, but this refuses to accept anything which the EFI boot manager hasn’t seen. Additionally, within the EFI shell trying commands such as reconnect –r, map –r, connect –r, never result in any more that the original single path to the boot disk being found.

Malvina

Re: San Boot

Duncan Edmonstone — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 08:30:20 GMT

Have a look at this:

http://www4.itrc.hp.com/service/cki/docDisplay.do?docLocale=en_US&docId=200000078232172

The DOC ID is OS050329_CW01 if you can't get in the euro version of ITRC.

HTH

Duncan

Re: San Boot

Patrick Wallek — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 08:37:58 GMT

About the only thing I can think of is use have 2 of the paths and define them as primary and alternate boot paths.

The securepath solution is fine, but it requires that securepath be up and running, and when the machine is booting it obviously isn't up yet, so it can't take advantage of any of the features available.

This is yet another reason I still prefer local scsi disks for boot disks.

Re: San Boot

Malvina Gooding_1 — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 08:42:10 GMT

Duncan

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I canâ t seem to load the page. Is there anywhere else I can pick it up?

Malvi

Re: San Boot

Duncan Edmonstone — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 08:46:58 GMT

Does your ITRC login have a support contract associated with it?

If yes, then llok to the bar on your left and go to 'maintenance and support for hp products'. On the next screen click on 'search technical knowledge base' (you might be asked to login at this point).

Assuming you get to the nexty page, change the search type to 'search by DOC ID' and enter the doc ID of OS050329_CW01 and click search.

If you can't get there, then you will need to log a call with HP and have them email you a copy. I can't post it here as we get in trouble for doing that!

HTH

Duncan

Re: San Boot

Uwe Zessin — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 08:52:24 GMT

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=PSD_OS050329_CW01

You might have to reload this page - somehow it claimed an error when I tried to fetch it the first time.

Re: San Boot

Malvina Gooding_1 — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 08:57:41 GMT

Duncan

Haven't got round to linking contract yet. A colleage has been able to access the document.

Thanks

Malvina

Re: San Boot

Malvina Gooding_1 — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 10:05:20 GMT

Hi

Still no joy. I've followed the steps in the document to Enumerating all Fibre Channel devices. When I run drivers from the efi shell prompt both fibre channels are listed but I get the following error when I run drvcfg -s 20 22

NOTE: redirecting console output may create test failures and is not recommended. It then returns to the efi shell prompt.

Any ideas?

Malvina

Re: San Boot

Duncan Edmonstone — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 12:07:20 GMT

Malvina

Whats the output of just running

drivers

and

drvcfg 20

from the EFI shell?

Thx

Duncan

Re: San Boot

Malvina Gooding_1 — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 02:40:37 GMT

Duncan

I've only shown the section of drivers relating to the fibre. Let me know if you need the full output.

shell> drivers
T D
D Y C I
R P F A
V VERSION E G G #D #C DRIVER NAME IMAGE NAME
== ======== = = = == == =================================== ===================
11 00000010 B - - 6 14 PCI Bus Driver PciBus
1C 0000011E B X X 1 1 HP 2 Gb Fibre Channel Driver PciROM:41:04:00:000
20 0000011E D X X 1 - HP 2 Gb Fibre Channel Driver PciROM:61:04:00:00

Shell> drvcfg 20
Configurable Components
Drv[20] Ctrl[22] Lang[eng]

Malvina

Re: San Boot

Duncan Edmonstone — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 02:51:01 GMT

Malvina,

Note that in the example given on the document, they don't select the driver you have - you selected:

HP 2 Gb Fibre Channel Driver PciROM

and in they example the driver selected was called

HP Tachyon XL2 Fibre Channel Mass S PciRom

In the example, both these drivers appeared - do you see this driver at all?

HTH

Duncan

Re: San Boot

Duncan Edmonstone — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 02:56:14 GMT

Malvina,

If you *don't* see the driver mentioned then you might need to look ar updating the EFI driver for the FC card - look here for more info:

http://h20293.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=A6795AEFI

HTH

Duncan

Re: San Boot

Malvina Gooding_1 — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 04:55:25 GMT

Duncan

We're not using either of the cards mentioned. This is the one we have HP 2Gb PCI/PCI-X Fibre Channel FC/GigE Dual Port Combo Adapter.

Malvina

Re: San Boot

Duncan Edmonstone — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 05:23:37 GMT

OK, thats probably the A9784A card.

You can get the latest EFI drivers for this card here:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?locale=en_US&taskId=135&prodSeriesId=331473&prodTypeId=329290&pnameOID=331475&swEnvOID=7

HTH

Duncan

Re: San Boot

Duncan Edmonstone — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 05:41:38 GMT

Malvina,

Looking at the notes included with that firmware it seem that the menu options are different anyway from what you get with the A6795A card. I'd seriously consider getting a call logged with HP for some help on setting this up.

HTH

Duncan

Re: San Boot

Malvina Gooding_1 — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 08:47:16 GMT

Duncan

Thanks for all your help. Updating the efi drivers worked.

Regards

Malvina

Re: San Boot

Duncan Edmonstone — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 03:36:50 GMT

Malvina,

Glad to hear it worked (finally!)

Out of interest (as I may have to do this myself shortly), did you end up having to enumerate the other boot paths through EFI, or did the simple act of updating the EFI firmware just sort everything out?

Cheers

Duncan

Re: San Boot

Malvina Gooding_1 — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 04:40:54 GMT

Hi Duncan

We had some problems getting the drivers onto the machine. Tried burning the files onto cd but the file system wasn't right. We ended up using a usb floppy drive and running the tool from there.

The readme and pdf files in the download have good instructions for updating the drivers and setting changes.

At the EFI shell use drvcfg to edit the boot setting and set the EFI Variable EFIFCScanLevel to World Login

You will now need to setup your alternate boot path in EFI Boot manager.

Hope this helps.

Malvina