topic Re: EVA 8000 and installing iscsi connectivity kit in Disk Enclosures

EVA 8000 and installing iscsi connectivity kit

mujzeptu — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:41:55 GMT

Had some questions regarding the eva 8000 and the iscsi kit.

1) Do you connect the FC cables to the loop-back switches, or does it have to be an external FC switch on the SAN?

2) Can you utilize more than 2 ethernet ports? I know you can have a multipath setup with redundant mpx100's, but can you utilize bandwidth from all 4 ports at the same time?

3) Can you do this install and upgrade while the array is online and in production? This would be a fresh install of iscsi stuff and the setup of it, so does this affect the array and accessing it at all?

Re: EVA 8000 and installing iscsi connectivity kit

IBaltay — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:46:42 GMT

Hi,
this installation doc could help you:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&objectID=c00616651&prodTypeId=18964&prodSeriesId=463512

Re: EVA 8000 and installing iscsi connectivity kit

mujzeptu — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:48:42 GMT

Yeah already printed that out and have it handy. I was just curious if anyone has direct experience with the product and environment and could simply provide yes/no responses.

Re: EVA 8000 and installing iscsi connectivity kit

Steven Clementi — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:13:17 GMT

1. The FC Cables do NOT connect to the Loop Back Switches. They connect to either host ports on the EVA or to your SAN Switches.

2. There are only 2 Ethernet ports on the iSCSI Gateway. Redundant set up would have at least 2 gateways. iSCSI Initiator has multipath support. Theoretically, in a "redundant" environment, you could have up to 4 paths, 1 off each ethernet port.

The answer is yes, you can... but only in the sense that you can load balance iSCSi access across 4 ethernet ports. (if configured properly).

3. It does not affect the array. The only thing would be if you were connecting directly to the EVA Host Ports. You would lose connectivity on those ports to your Fibre based devices. So sure, you can install the gateway with the EVA online and in production.

Steven

Re: EVA 8000 and installing iscsi connectivity kit

mujzeptu — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:13:43 GMT

Ok, I finally got these ordered and in.

I have followed the directions so please dont post links to them....

I have racked two iscsi bridges. I have the FC from both bridges port 1 running to both EVA8000 controllers FP3. I have the FC from both bridges port 2 running to both EVA8000 controllers FP4.

I have connected to the mpx100s and setup networking. They have valid IPs and networking info and are accessible on the network (the same network the eva8000 and command view are ran from).

I also have network ports on the same network running to both bridges ethernet port 1 so they have throughput connectivity.

My problem is when I go into CV, it fails to discover the new bridges under iSCSI. If I try a manual add it says, "Operation Failed! Error received from the iSCSI Controller. See log file for details."

If I look at the mpx100 logs, it flashes up some LIP stuff and then does 95% of the logs filled up with, "01/01/1970 00:32:48 QL2322 3 #0: QLIsrEventHandler: Link mode up <8030>"

I have followed the directions, I have no errors on the bridges or fault lights happening. I have setup networking and can telnet and access both. I have rebooted them, cold power cycled, etc... and I still get the same error in commandview.

Re: EVA 8000 and installing iscsi connectivity kit

IBaltay — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:39:51 GMT

Hi,
the error description is on page 180 here:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01432832/c01432832.pdf?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

Re: EVA 8000 and installing iscsi connectivity kit

IBaltay — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:40:51 GMT

sorry it is the page 178:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01432832/c01432832.pdf?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

Re: EVA 8000 and installing iscsi connectivity kit

mujzeptu — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:59:06 GMT

I guess that kinda helps...

I am wondering if its FC related with the LIP errors? I cant pause or stop the show logs command to see what the top few errors are however.

How would you connect two iscsi bridges to one eva8000? Should I not have redundancy to each EVA8000 controller?

Re: EVA 8000 and installing iscsi connectivity kit

IBaltay — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:32:41 GMT

another hint could be this the string "#0"

According to the EVA iSCSI connectivity user guide from my previous post
your error message:
01/01/1970 00:32:48 QL2322 3 #0: QLIsrEventHandler: Link mode up <8030>"

is most probably from the FC channel driver:
and #0 applies to the FC port 1 (FC1)

Re: EVA 8000 and installing iscsi connectivity kit

mujzeptu — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:48:40 GMT

Hmmm ok.

So does ANYONE know how I should properly wire all FC connections from one EVA8000 (with two controllers) to two mpx100/iSCSI bridges?

Re: EVA 8000 and installing iscsi connectivity kit

mujzeptu — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:14:31 GMT

What if I set this up one at a time? Do I need to power cycle the eva8000 controllers? Or can I just hook up the FC ports, one to each FP port on the eva8000 controllers and be done?

Re: EVA 8000 and installing iscsi connectivity kit

Uwe Zessin — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:25:23 GMT

From what I can see, you don't need to reboot the controllers, but you need to switch the host ports to "direct connect" via the OCP - the exact steps are described in the user manual for the MPX.

Re: EVA 8000 and installing iscsi connectivity kit

mujzeptu — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:33:03 GMT

As always, thanks Uwe.

I completely missed that part.

So, it says for multipath (the recommended and intended implementation) that I should connect mpx100(1) port2 and mpx100(2) port1 together for the redundancy.

Could I have all 4 FC ports going to the eva? Or is there overkill anyway as the 4 ethernet ports couldnt keep up?

Re: EVA 8000 and installing iscsi connectivity kit

Uwe Zessin — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 08:03:54 GMT

I would connect them for redundancy, first.
Last year I was in a QLogic session and some performance data was shown. I don't recall the exact numbers, but the throughput did look quite impressive.