topic Re: Solaris server sees two disks for one disk on EVA in HPE EVA Storage

Solaris server sees two disks for one disk on EVA

Paul Henderson_2 — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 15:47:24 GMT

On a new Solaris V240 server running Solaris 9:

- went to Command View EVA. Created a new host, OS type Solaris. It saw the new host HBA's WWID properly.
- created a 40GB vdisk, presented to this new host
- went to the host, ran 'devfsadm', then a 'format', and two disks show up:

AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
...
4. c5t0d1
/pci@1d,700000/QLGC,qla@1/sd@0,1
5. c5t1d1
/pci@1d,700000/QLGC,qla@1/sd@1,1

The host is in its own zone. The zone contains the host, and two of the EVA controller's ports.

I have two other Solaris servers with identical zoning and they both see only one disk per presented EVA disk.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Re: Solaris server sees two disks for one disk on EVA

Bostjan Kosi — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 17:47:01 GMT

Do you have Secure Path for solaris installed also on this box. It is normal to see two disks if you have a system with one HBA. With two adapters you would see 4 of them. That's why we need multipathing SW (like Secure Path) Maybe the other two servers have only one EVA port in the zone.

Check the following docs...:
The first one contains an interesting note (under Single path support)

http://h200005.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00309104/c00309104.pdf

http://h200005.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00308551/c00308551.pdf

BR
B.

Re: Solaris server sees two disks for one disk on EVA

Paul Henderson_2 — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 10:27:58 GMT

Thanks for the reply. The SUN system has a single port HBA, and we are not running SecurePath software. This is a bare-bones, non fault tolerant implementation (i.e. cheap ;-).

My next step is to determine if SecurePath is running. We didn't pay for it, so I am assuming it is not, and it is also not on the other servers.

BTW, I can read/write to the disk just fine, so this is really just a nuisance rather than a showstopper.

The other Sun servers are identical. Single port HBAs with two EVA ports in their zones.

Re: Solaris server sees two disks for one disk on EVA

SAKET_5 — Sun, 03 Apr 2005 04:26:13 GMT

Hi Paul,

Secure Path for Solaris is a licensed product meaning you need to pay to get it..so if you dont remember purchase and install of this software, it wont be running.

Seeing two disks in your scenarios is perfectly normal as you have two paths (HBA port 0 - a fabric switch port - the first "Host Port" on Controller A & HBA port 0 - a fabric switch port - the first "Host Port" on Controller B) - so you see two instances of the same disk - in dual redundant fabric design - you would see 4 paths..

This problem (if you call it a problem!) can be resolved via use of a multipathing software such as a paid for Secure Path or a free MPxIO solution that comes with Sun...

Or, you could just zone it such that your server zone contains your HBA WWPN & EVA Single WWPN.

Hope it helps.

Re: Solaris server sees two disks for one disk on EVA

Paul Henderson_2 — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 13:14:46 GMT

I have two 'paths' to the EVA for all my other Solaris servers, none of which run 'secure path', so removing one path from the zone isn't something I wanted to consider. After a lot of fumbling around, what I found is this in the /kernel/drv/qla2300.conf file:

# CPQfcraid:start of RAID edits Caution: do not remove, this line used by pkgadd/pkgrm
# Created: Mon Aug 1 09:28:58 EDT 2005. Don't move or delete!
# The following entries support per-instance adapter configuration.
# If these entries cause a problem on your machine, you must comment
# them out to revert to default driver mode (as installed).
hba0-SCSI-target-id-0-fibre-channel-port-name="50001fe150046668";
hba0-SCSI-target-id-1-fibre-channel-port-name="50001fe15004666c";

Note the second line with target id 1. I noticed that this line did not exist on my other Solaris servers. When I removed that line and did a "touch /reconfigure; reboot", I now get only one disk showing up:

unixsrv4.pppl.gov# devfsadm -v
unixsrv4.pppl.gov# format
Searching for disks...done

c4t0d1: configured with capacity of 99.98GB

AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
0. c0t0d0
/pci@1c,600000/scsi@2/sd@0,0
1. c0t1d0
/pci@1c,600000/scsi@2/sd@1,0
2. c4t0d1
/pci@1d,700000/QLGC,qla@1/sd@0,1

I'm guessing that the installation of the CPQfcraid package added both lines assuming that we'd be using a dual port adapter and secure path.

Re: Solaris server sees two disks for one disk on EVA

generic_1 — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 14:28:03 GMT

You really need to purchase the Pathing software. You are eventually going to have problems doing this on an EVA even if you get it to work. It really is not a good way to do this.

That being said.
Go to one path. One fiber from one controller and set that as the controller. If you loose it your hosed, till you get it fixed. That simple.
The EVA5000 predates PVlinks is basically why your tied to this expensive software solution.