topic Re: Storage Question in Operating System - OpenVMS

Storage Question

Doug Baer — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:30:02 GMT

Bear with me here, as I am definitely not a VMS guy.

I have a customer running a VMS cluster attached to its storage via FC through two Cisco MDS 9120 SAN switches.

They are planning to replace those switches with new MDS 9222i's using the "shutdown, move all cables, startup" method.

I figured it would be good to ask the experts out here if there are any concerns regarding preservation of domain and area IDs (a la HP-UX and AIX) in order to maintain VMS device IDs -- or am I just being paranoid? :)

Thanks!

Re: Storage Question

Doug Baer — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:35:01 GMT

I forgot to mention that I did find this thread here from 2005 and I am working on the assumption that it applies to my situation and there will be no need for changes to the VMS hosts.

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=970480

Re: Storage Question

Hein van den Heuvel — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:41:51 GMT

Right. As per that other note, Nothing critical should change. Just a path.

In fact, supposedly the system has multy-pathing in place already, and you should be able to do this transparently, without taking OpenVMS down. Just unplug one path, re-route, maybe scan to see it went down, re-wire through the new switch, scan to see it became available, and replace the other path(s).

fwiw,
Hein.

Re: Storage Question

Doug Baer — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:44:14 GMT

Hein, Thank you for the quick response. I appreciate the information. That will make them very happy to hear.

Doug

Re: Storage Question

Peter Zeiszler — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:04:27 GMT

Hopefully the 2 SAN switches means you have 2 paths to the SAN. Also the shutdown, move all cables, startup - is that staggered? Are you trying to do this with live system or are you planning on a downtime?

The IDs should be the same once the fabric (connection from VMS to SAN) is re-established.

Re: Storage Question

Doug Baer — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:03:26 GMT

Yes, two paths to the SAN and this will be done during downtime.

Re: Storage Question

Doug Baer — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:37:38 GMT

Thanks to everyone for your assistance.