topic Re: VA 7410 mandatory software for sharing virtual array in Disk Enclosures

VA 7410 mandatory software for sharing virtual array

Julio Porras_1 — Mon, 07 Jul 2003 13:08:48 GMT

We are buying a 1.5TB VA7410 to install on a SAN and share between 3 servers. We want to know what software is mandatory in order to share the virtual array, 500GB for each server (will be using serviceguard also). We were told that we needed StorageWorks Secure Manager Virtual Array in order to share the VA, but overview and summary of this software says it is for providing a good protection in sharing, but not indispenasble for sharing.

Thanks for your advise,
Julio.

Re: VA 7410 mandatory software for sharing virtual array

Julio Porras_1 — Mon, 07 Jul 2003 13:15:19 GMT

PS. All servers are HP-UX machines, conencted via fibre channel switches.

Re: VA 7410 mandatory software for sharing virtual array

Eugeny Brychkov — Mon, 07 Jul 2003 16:32:25 GMT

Julio,
PS is very helpful.
What's secure manager? This software is used to mask LUNs from certain hosts (better to say - to allow certain hosts access certain LUNs). I would better show you an example:
Config: some hpux machines and some w2k machines. If you would not mask hpux LUNs from w2k machines then these w2k machines will try to grab as many as possible LUNs and will try writing their w2k signatures into LUNs thus with possible hpux data structures corruption. Thus secure manager will allow to mask hpux (and other non-w2k LUNs) to eliminate w2k servers seeing these LUNs and preventing accental signature writing.
In your configuration, when you have only hpux servers in config, all servers will see all LUNs, but it's up to you (or system admin) which LUNs to use at particular hosts, and which not to use.
Thus in 'pure' hpux environment it's not mandatory to use secure manager. BUT if you'll be adding hosts with another OS installed you may have to
Eugeny

Re: VA 7410 mandatory software for sharing virtual array

Peter Mattei — Tue, 08 Jul 2003 13:53:44 GMT

One more info.
If your 3 HP-UX hosts were independent you could go without Secure Manager, however it would prevent from mounting the wrong LUNs.
If your 3 HP-UX hosts are within one Service Guard Cluster you do not need Secure Manager at all.
But, if you have a 2-node SG Cluster and 1 seperate HP-UX server Secure Manager is required in order to have an HP supported configuration. The Cluster needs to be isolated and no other server is allowed to "see" the LUNs.

Cheers
peter

Re: VA 7410 mandatory software for sharing virtual array

Julio Porras_1 — Tue, 08 Jul 2003 16:44:58 GMT

In our specific configuration we will have 2 HP-UX - MC ServiceGuard - clustered servers (production system), and 2 other HP-UX non clustered servers (quality assurance and development systems) sharing the va-7410, all of them running SAP R/3 4.7 with Informix RDBMS.

According to the last post by Peter Mattei, with this configuration it's possible to share the VA among all 4 servers but Secure Manager is required in order to have an HP supported configuration.

So I have to pay $10.000+ in software license just to have HP support our cluster? What is the danger in not doing so?

Re: VA 7410 mandatory software for sharing virtual array

Julio Porras_1 — Tue, 02 Dec 2003 15:57:22 GMT

no more answers?