EVA Microcode update and ESX server ?

[Sajeev2007]

Hi All,

We are updating our EVAs microcode. We have an ESX server with LUNs on this EVA and two other EVAs. Should we shut down the ESX server and bring down the entire farm or just unpresent the LUNs, and present them back after the update ? I am looking for like a best practice to do here.

Thanks,

[Mark...]

Hi,

When you update your EVA[s] then they WILL reboot as a pair. This will cause a temporary loss of connection to the OS.
Depending on what version of code you are loading the interuption can be anything from 30/40 seconds to 20+ minutes. You would need to read the relevant release to find this out.
I do not know how VMware/ESX server will handle this - if it is anything like windows then it will probably NOT be happy!
OpenVMS & Tru64 will handle small disruptions ok.

If you suspect / know that your system will not handle this disruption then it would probably be a good idea to schedule some server downtime / dismount from the EVA concerned prior to a code load. There should be no need to unpresent the LUN's on the EVA itself.

Upgrade code, verify all is OK reboot / mount LUN's again.

NOTE: when code loading it is not uncommon for the management server to loose comms to the EVA for several mins - this is normal.
Also make sure you read the release notes and understand them fully before you do the code load incase there are any specific things that you need to do before the code load.

Mark...

[James ~ Happy Dude]

http://h71019.www7.hp.com/ActiveAnswers/downloads/BestPractice_VMwareESX25_MSA-EVA-XP.pdf

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi,

What EVA are you running, and what version are you upgrading from/to ?

This document:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01077642/c01077642.pdf

has some good details for online updates on an EVA4/6/8x00 EVA.

"When performing an online upgrade, select a time period that meets the following criteria:
I/Os per second (IOPS) should be less than 7000
I/O throughput should be less than 70 MB/s"

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Rob

[Sajeev2007]

EVA 8000. upgrading to 6.0

[gabbar]

Best practice is to Shutdown all the hosts connected to the EVA!! and to contact HP for doing XCS/VCS upgrade.

Few latest VCS/XCS version can be upgraded online but hosts will experience some disconnects in HOST IO. Hosts might require a reboot as well to find the LUNs back depending on the OS and patch version on them. So you have to look in to Host and Application Timeout settings as well.