topic Re: Device file name change in HPE EVA Storage

Device file name change

BPatrick — Mon, 08 May 2006 04:44:41 GMT

Hi,
I reseated on of the disks in the EVA and regrouped the diskgroup. After that I noticed disk device file name has changed in the HP-UX servers connected to the EVA. Is this is normal behaviour? If so then on what situation can this happen and is there any solution to prevent this from happening?

Re: Device file name change

Mark Poeschl_2 — Mon, 08 May 2006 10:20:35 GMT

What exactly do you mean by "re-grouped the diskgroup?" Did you at any time delete and re-create Vdisks?

Re: Device file name change

BPatrick — Mon, 08 May 2006 10:43:35 GMT

One of the disk was went out of the group when I reseated it. so I added that disk back in to the diskgroup. Thats all I have done. I dint do any changes to the Vdisks.

Re: Device file name change

Sheriff Andy — Mon, 08 May 2006 11:42:49 GMT

Patrick,

Did you by chance reboot your HP-UX box? I am wondering if you have your disks persistent across reboots?

Have you ran these commands?

# spmgr update
# kmadmin -L swspData
# config -M swspData -u

Re: Device file name change

BPatrick — Mon, 08 May 2006 12:05:58 GMT

Sheriff,
I dont use secure path, instead I use pvlinks. So spmgr is not available.

Re: Device file name change

Sheriff Andy — Mon, 08 May 2006 12:28:10 GMT

We have had our device file names change on 3 different occasions;

As you said, we do use secure path. We have a EVA 5K, attached to 3 HP-UX systems, and 5 Windows systems.

1) After a reboot, the device file names came up different because we didn't make the disks persistent across reboots.
2) After a datacenter power outage, we had one volume group change its device file names. Everyone else was fine.
3) After an ignite all of the device file names changed.

Re: Device file name change

krusty — Mon, 08 May 2006 23:13:49 GMT

Is this an EVA 3000/5000(VCS 3.X) or 3000/5000 VCS 4.X or 4/6/8000? If is is the formal, Secure Path is required or you can get weird behavior. This is do to the Active Passive controllers.

On VCS 4.X on the 3000/5000 or all the 4/6/8000's the controllers are Active/Active, so PVlinks are supported.

Curt

Re: Device file name change

BPatrick — Tue, 09 May 2006 02:05:42 GMT

Its an EVA4000 and i guess secure path is not compatible with the eva 4k

Re: Device file name change

Mohanasundaram_1 — Tue, 09 May 2006 06:01:25 GMT

Hi Patrick,

EVA4000 supports autopath component of the securepath. therefore "autopath display" should display the LUNs and device files.

If you had deleted LUNs and created newer LUNs then the device files can change after the system reboots.

Always remember to delete the LUN from Securepath first and then unpresent the LUNs.
If you had not followed this, you might see the device files changing when your HP-UX system reboots.

With regards,
Mohan.

Re: Device file name change

BPatrick — Tue, 09 May 2006 06:54:43 GMT

Mohan,
The disks are configured with pvlinks and i am not using securepath or autopath. I got a response from HP that the device names can change if the fibre channel ports change. in my case this has happened when i recently swapped both the cables recently during some test. So I think that answers my question. I will create a link to the new device file which will solve the problem.
Thank you all for your valuable responses. I will assign points and close this case now

Re: Device file name change

BPatrick — Tue, 09 May 2006 06:57:53 GMT

Thread closed