topic Re: Secure Path in Disk Enclosures

Secure Path

AVV — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 06:40:29 GMT

Hi,

I installed a secure path software on my rp7420 system running on 11iv2. EVA 5000 is connected to this and I chose the active passive binary to install to it. I have allocated 5 LUNs to the system and I got only 5 new disks while running ioscan -fnC disk. I suppose I have to get 4 paths since the server is connected with two HBA to the EVA. The spmgr display output is given below...Can someone guide me to configure well. I have created the VGs with 4 disks now.

# spmgr display
Server: dopdwdb1.dohabank.internal Report Created: Tue, Feb 09 13:45:51 2010
Command: spmgr display
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Storage: 5000-1FE1-5002-8770
Load Balance: Off Auto-restore: Off
Path Verify: On Verify Interval: 30
HBAs:td0 td1
Controller: P5849E1AAPY0DD, Operational
P5849E1AAPY094, Operational
Devices: c14t0d0 c14t0d1 c14t0d2 c14t0d3 c14t0d4

TGT/LUN Device WWLUN_ID H/W_Path #_Paths
0/ 0 c14t0d0 6005-08B4-0001-3A64-0001-2000-02D9-0000 4
255/255/0/0.0
Controller Path_Instance HBA Preferred? Path_Status
P5849E1AAPY0DD no
c10t0d1 td0 no Standby
c12t0d1 td1 no Standby

Controller Path_Instance HBA Preferred? Path_Status
P5849E1AAPY094 no
c11t0d1 td0 no Active
c13t0d1 td1 no Available

TGT/LUN Device WWLUN_ID H/W_Path #_Paths
0/ 1 c14t0d1 6005-08B4-0001-3A64-0001-2000-02ED-0000 4
255/255/0/0.1
Controller Path_Instance HBA Preferred? Path_Status
P5849E1AAPY0DD no
c10t0d2 td0 no Standby
c12t0d2 td1 no Standby

Controller Path_Instance HBA Preferred? Path_Status
P5849E1AAPY094 no
c11t0d2 td0 no Active
c13t0d2 td1 no Available

TGT/LUN Device WWLUN_ID H/W_Path #_Paths
0/ 2 c14t0d2 6005-08B4-0001-3A64-0001-2000-02DC-0000 4
255/255/0/0.2
Controller Path_Instance HBA Preferred? Path_Status
P5849E1AAPY0DD no
c10t0d3 td0 no Standby
c12t0d3 td1 no Standby

Controller Path_Instance HBA Preferred? Path_Status
P5849E1AAPY094 no
c11t0d3 td0 no Active
c13t0d3 td1 no Available

TGT/LUN Device WWLUN_ID H/W_Path #_Paths
0/ 3 c14t0d3 6005-08B4-0001-3A64-0001-2000-02E8-0000 4
255/255/0/0.3
Controller Path_Instance HBA Preferred? Path_Status
P5849E1AAPY0DD no
c12t0d4 td1 no Active
c10t0d4 td0 no Available

Controller Path_Instance HBA Preferred? Path_Status
P5849E1AAPY094 no
c13t0d4 td1 no Standby
c11t0d4 td0 no Standby

TGT/LUN Device WWLUN_ID H/W_Path #_Paths
0/ 4 c14t0d4 6005-08B4-0001-3A64-0001-2000-02E1-0000 4
255/255/0/0.4
Controller Path_Instance HBA Preferred? Path_Status
P5849E1AAPY0DD no
c12t0d5 td1 no Active
c10t0d5 td0 no Available

Controller Path_Instance HBA Preferred? Path_Status
P5849E1AAPY094 no
c13t0d5 td1 no Standby
c11t0d5 td0 no Standby

#

Re: Secure Path

Duncan Edmonstone — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:42:44 GMT

This looks good to me... Secure Path for Active/Passive arrays will only create one DSF for each vdisk.

HTH

Duncan

Re: Secure Path

AVV — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:55:47 GMT

Hi,

spmgr shows me that 4 paths..How do I see those? If any of the paths goes down, the configuration is good enough to save the system ? Can u give me some light on this, please..I mean a little elaboration

Re: Secure Path

Víctor Cespón — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:07:02 GMT

You have 4 devices for each LUN:

c10t0dx
c11t0dx
c12t0dx
c13t0dx

x = 1 .. 5

c10 and C12 are through one controller, c11 and c13 through the other controller
c10 and C11 are through one FC port, C12 and C13 are through the other FC port

The access to a LUN is done through one controller until there's a failure that forces the vdisks to be accessed through the other controller.
Securepath will send the command to the controllers to change the vdisk ownership and start sending data to c10t0d1 instead of c11t0d1 for example.

For the OS only c14t0dx exist, it communicates with them and securepath hiddens which device is being used underneath

Re: Secure Path

Taifur — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:37:10 GMT

Hi,

Check below link as follows,

http://docs.hp.com/en/T2767-90170/ch08s18.html

http://docs.hp.com/en/5992-2852/ch04s04.html

Rgds//
Taifur

Re: Secure Path

AVV — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:48:13 GMT

Hi vcespon ,

Thanks for the reply.

Did you mean that it will not affect if one controller or path went down will not affect the disks or vg access (as per the ouput given above) .

My configurations are ok ? I need only redundancy, nothing more !!

I will read the documents anyway, but a quick reply is much appreciated.

Re: Secure Path

AnthonySN — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 07:16:07 GMT

What is the current firmware of the controller of eva5000.
my suggestion would be to upgrade the controller firmware to VCS 4.001 and have active/active Secure path installed so you have all the four paths active.
Yea it does involve a lot of other firmware upgrades like HBA, Hard Disk, CV etc.
Have a good backup before you do upgrade...

go thru the below thread.

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1167783

Re: Secure Path

Mark... — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:23:10 GMT

Hi,
Ref above note - I think you mean VCS4.100.
This will require more work like moving cables from Active/Passive to Active/Active config as well as HP_UX SP V4.0f which will then use autopath unless you are at 11.31 which is native - someone may correct me on that as HPUX is not my No1 OS!.
If you go rom V3.xx to V4.xx you will also have to do this offline - no user access - and probably modify you SAN config and a few other things.
Not really a 5min job...
Mark...

Re: Secure Path

AnthonySN — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:26:56 GMT

yes it is VCS4.100 and also in hpux11.31 we dont require Secure Path.

Re: Secure Path

AnthonySN — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:29:17 GMT

forgot to mention that for hpux 11.31 you need to have a san which will support active/active and not active/passive.

Re: Secure Path

Torsten. — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:11:19 GMT

If you look at your ioscan you will see "pseudo" hardware pathes and devices, e.g.

255/255/0/0.2

Secure path will use this path and handle the "real" hardware pathes.

Re: Secure Path

krusty — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:36:26 GMT

This is from another post I had - just for clarification..

All HP-UX versions since the early 90's have supported multipathing (aka PVLinks). Some arrays require special software(an older EVAs (3K/5K) is an example) for multipath support. This is an exception to the rule, as most arrays HP sells are A/A.

There is software for load balancing that is provided (aka Autopath, and now SecurePath) which was not avaialble until the early 00's. With the release of 11i v3, they have now built load balancing in to the mass storage stack, and improved the naming and addressing schema (no more cXtYdZ, just disk1, etc).

Just to reiterate - HP-UX has native multipathing built in - no special software required (with the EXCEPTION of the A/P VCS versions of the EVA3/5000).

Sincerely,

Curt

Re: Secure Path

AVV — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 06:56:51 GMT

Thanks