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Re: EVA VCS upgrade from 3020 to 4001

 
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Mahadev Pednekar
Frequent Advisor

EVA VCS upgrade from 3020 to 4001

Hi gurus,
Next month I am planning to upgrade VCS of EVA 5000 from 3020 to 4001. I know that minimum VCS required is 3028 to have VCS 4001. I want to know how safe is this upgrade. Following are my querries:
1.How much downtime is required ?
2. There are two clusters (HPUX 11.16) & two windows clusters with latest SP, what changes I have to do in cluster services as far as cluster lock disk in hpux is concerned.
3. Any rearranging of fibre cables are required.
Deatiled docs submitted by gurus are appretiated.

Regards,
Mahadev
9 REPLIES 9
Steven Clementi
Honored Contributor

Re: EVA VCS upgrade from 3020 to 4001

In general, the upgrade is safe. It's what happens after the upgrade that might not be great. The newer firmwares are a lot more sensitive to disk failures and may report a disk as fialed, when it really might not be. You should make sure all the proper updates are done... VCS.. AND Disk Firmware.

1. I think you should plan for the whole weekend to be down or more. You may even need 2 weekends. First one to upgrade to 3.028 and the second to go to 4.001. I haven't done the upgrade yet so I am unsure of actual times. Only read and heard about the stories.

2. You will needto upgrade your multipath software. MPIO for windows, and HP-UX gets SecurePath I believe, just an upgraded version with autopath (I am not a hp-ux guru).

3. HP suggests that even if you are not using CA, you arrage your fibre connections so that FP1 on both controllers so to fabric A and FP2 go to Fabric B. Basically, odd ports to one fabric and even ports to the other. Originally, EVA's were installed and connected to the fabrics by crossing the ports. Controller A FP1 and Controller B FP2 went to one fabric and the opposite ports went to the other fabric. Some customers were wired incorrectly and already have "odd to one fab and even to the other".

Not sure what these changes may or may not do to a hp-ux box, but you should ave no issues with Windows once you have MPIO on.



Steven
Steven Clementi
HP Master ASE, Storage, Servers, and Clustering
MCSE (NT 4.0, W2K, W2K3)
VCP (ESX2, Vi3, vSphere4, vSphere5, vSphere 6.x)
RHCE
NPP3 (Nutanix Platform Professional)
Mohanasundaram_1
Honored Contributor

Re: EVA VCS upgrade from 3020 to 4001

Hi Mahadev,

I have done the upgrade similar to your scenario. I have done this upgrade in 2 sets of Serviceguard clusters. from 3.020 to 3.028 and then to 4.001. I succeeded on both the occasions. Hence I consider the upgrade to be safe.

1) Downtime for the Firmware upgrade will not be more than 2 hours. VCS 4.001 is an offline upgrade, make a note of it.

The VG configuration after the VCS upgrade may take time. It may result in a lot of confusion, if you did not prepare well prior to the activity.

2) I had to modify the cluster ascii file for cluster lock device and redistribute the binary.

3) FC cables have to be re-arranged as indicated by Steven.

There is a host upgrade manual for this activity. Check with your HP guys for this manual and will make your life easier.

Depending upon how old/new your patch level is, it may take more/less time to prepare the servers prior to the upgrade.

IN summary, Steven is again correct that downtime may be for the whole weekend.

I will later provide you the link to another thread where I had given some steps I followed for this upgrade. At the moment I am not able to access my forum profile to provide you the link.

With regards,
Mohan.
Attitude, Not aptitude, determines your altitude
Mohanasundaram_1
Honored Contributor

Re: EVA VCS upgrade from 3020 to 4001

Here is the link I am talking about,

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1004000
Attitude, Not aptitude, determines your altitude
Mahadev Pednekar
Frequent Advisor

Re: EVA VCS upgrade from 3020 to 4001

Thanks for your immediate response.
Steven,
After upgrading VCS to 4.001 in EVA 5k does it becomes equivalent to EVA 8k ?
Mohan,
I read the link provided by you. Have certain doubts.
i) Presently I have SP 3.0E can I directly install 3.0F SP1 or do I have to unistall 3.0E.
ii)Will SP 3.0F SP1 creates virtual LUN like in SP 3.0E. If yes then device files will remain same or changed.
iii)If not then VG has to be configured by using PV links and what about cluster lock disk (which will have single path i.e no redundancy)
iv)What is ULM software ?
v) Upgrade manual is similar to "Imtact assement checklist for upgrading VCS to 4.001"

Regards,
Mahadev
Steven Clementi
Honored Contributor

Re: EVA VCS upgrade from 3020 to 4001

"After upgrading VCS to 4.001 in EVA 5k does it becomes equivalent to EVA 8k?"

- There are some apparent differences so it will not be "equivalent", but the upgrade does give you some of the features of the XCS code running on 200 and 210 bases HSV controllers.


Steven
Steven Clementi
HP Master ASE, Storage, Servers, and Clustering
MCSE (NT 4.0, W2K, W2K3)
VCP (ESX2, Vi3, vSphere4, vSphere5, vSphere 6.x)
RHCE
NPP3 (Nutanix Platform Professional)
Mohanasundaram_1
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: EVA VCS upgrade from 3020 to 4001

Hi Mahadev,

i) If you have a web upgrade file for 3.0F , downloaded from the web then you can upgrade without removing 3.0E. If you have got a full version of 3.0F in a CD, then you have to uninstall 3.0E and install the newer version. I did the second option.

ii) SP 3.0F SP1 will not have any virtual device files. It will not mask the original device files. Therefore all the 4 paths for each LUN will be visible for you after the upgrade. I am attaching an excel sheet which I prepared before I jumped into this upgrade. This will give you the Idea how the device files will be.

iii)Yes, you have to use the pvlinks. When you import the VG it will automatically import all the 4 paths. You just have to cross check. You have to modify cluster ascii file with the new device file and reditribute the cluster binary. You cannot specify an alternate PVlink for the cluster lock. That question still lingers.

iv)ULM is SCSI Upper Layer Module software. This is a pre-requisite for the successful install of SP 3.0F. without this software the SecurePath installation fails. This is freely available in one of your application media.

v)NO. There is a seperate host upgrade manual. You have to check with your HP contact. There was a mention about a migration tool for this VCS upgrade, in that manual. But I did my upgrades without that tool and the upgrade was pretty smooth.
I understand from my contact that the tool is currently not available.

Hope this helps.

With regards,
Mohan.
Attitude, Not aptitude, determines your altitude
Mohanasundaram_1
Honored Contributor

Re: EVA VCS upgrade from 3020 to 4001

As usual, forgot the attachment.

here comes the attachment.

I used the below command outputs to create this excel sheet.
spmgr display (gives wwlunID and original 4 devices associated with the virtual device)
strings /etc/lvmtab

You have to preserve the map file of the VGs on the servers before starting the acitivities.

All the best.
Attitude, Not aptitude, determines your altitude
Mahadev Pednekar
Frequent Advisor

Re: EVA VCS upgrade from 3020 to 4001

Hi Mohan,
Thanks for the information and clearing my all doubts. If possible can I have your e-mail id, my id is mahadev_p@yahoo.com.

Regards,
Mahadev
Muscat,Oman
Mahadev Pednekar
Frequent Advisor

Re: EVA VCS upgrade from 3020 to 4001

Thanks for your help.