topic Re: How to activate HBA? in Operating System - HP-UX

How to activate HBA?

Peter Jenssen — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 02:12:13 GMT

Good morning.

I'm going to install HPUX on two diskless hp9000 rp3410 using a Hitachi SAN for system disks.
(These are to be clustered)
We have such a cluster already, so it should be possible(!)

Now,
In order to present LUNs to these systems, the SAN needs to see the HBAs. (to determine WWN)

How do I make the HBAs on a diskless HP box active?
Just powering them on didn't seem to be sufficient.

thanks,

Peter Jenssen

Re: How to activate HBA?

Michael Tully — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 02:18:14 GMT

Normally you would issue this command to get them.

# /opt/fcms/bin/fcmsutil /dev/td0 (td1 td2 etc)

Not sure if it is any different in a cluster environment.

Re: How to activate HBA?

Peter Jenssen — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 02:27:21 GMT

-Ah, but there's no operating system loaded yet.

;-)

There must be some trick to get the fibre link active before the OS is started, or boot from SAN wouldn't work at all..

Peter

Re: How to activate HBA?

Jdamian — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 02:35:52 GMT

I think HBAs must be configured

Re: How to activate HBA?

Michael Tully — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 02:36:12 GMT

That was my comment about cluster ... (never played with one) It is an extremely interesting question. I've had a search around and can't find anything of note, but I will watch this posting with interest.

Re: How to activate HBA?

Michael Tully — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 02:37:56 GMT

You can't normally configure a HBA as they are auto-sensing ...

Re: How to activate HBA?

Massimo Bianchi — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 02:44:08 GMT

HI,
how is the connection: Point to Point, or Fabric ?

How is the SAN setup for the other server made ?

Regards,
Massimo

Re: How to activate HBA?

Peter Jenssen — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 02:46:13 GMT

Well, it's not a cluster yet.

It's just a couple of diskless servers with HBAs in them..

I've got two other boxes that do exactly what I want these to do, but they were already built by someone else.. :-(

Peter

Re: How to activate HBA?

Peter Jenssen — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 02:51:16 GMT

They are connected to a fabric.

The switch can't see them though.

Do I have to boot the OS installation CD first maybe?
Will that activate the HBA?

Peter

Re: How to activate HBA?

florence mathon lermusi — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 02:58:50 GMT

what type of HBA do you have ?

your OS booting image should include the FC driver for the HBA to be active.

Re: How to activate HBA?

Peter Jenssen — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 03:07:57 GMT

Hmm, but if the driver needs to be in the boot image, that poses the question:

What's happening during boot in the diskless servers?

The boot image is on the disk, right?
The disk is on the SAN.
-How then does it get the boot image without first activating the HBA?

(I've got two machines here that does it, I just don't know how they were set up..)

Thanks,

Peter

Re: How to activate HBA?

florence mathon lermusi — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 03:18:36 GMT

you don't use your lan ?

Re: How to activate HBA?

Peter Jenssen — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 19:08:27 GMT

Well today I'm getting a temporary local disk.
I want to make sure booting off local disk activates the HBA..

That would also nean I can configure the LUNs on the SAN..

Peter

Re: How to activate HBA?

Peter Jenssen — Fri, 16 Jul 2004 02:43:05 GMT

Well that did it.

You need to boot to activate the HBA.
Once booted, the system is visible to the SAN.
The SAN can then be configured to present the LUNs to the correct systems.
After that, the OS can be loaded onto the SAN.
Once the OS is on the SAN, the system can boot from it.
It selects IO code dependant on the boot device.
If the boot device is on an HBA, the appropriate code gets loaded and the system proceeds to boot from the SAN disk.
(If there is no disk to boot from, boot fails and the HBA is deactivated)

I'm still having problems with LUNs disappearing on me, but that's probably a Hitachi problem.. The systems still don't work properly.

Peter Jenssen