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EVA5000 to upgrade VCS from 3020 to 4001

 
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Atheer Tariq
Occasional Advisor

EVA5000 to upgrade VCS from 3020 to 4001

I have EVA 5000 with VCS as 3020 and need to upgrade the VCS to 4001, I came to know that to have VCS 4001 min VCS should be 3028. Now I require explanation on following if VCS is upgraded to 4001:
1. VCS 4001 is for active-active controller, what change I have to do on HPUX & Windows side
2. On hpux secure path is 3.0E & on windows it is 3.0c, whether same SP will work or diff software is required.
3. I have two hpux clusters 11.16, any config change is required.

FYI:- I have recently purchased EVA 8000 for our DR setup to have replication between both EVAs.
11 REPLIES 11
Zinky
Honored Contributor

Re: EVA5000 to upgrade VCS from 3020 to 4001

Atheer, I am as well currently researching this. My findings/assumptions so far:

1. Indeed you cannot go to 4.001 w/o going to 3.028 first.

2. I think you will no longer be able to use your existing Securepath software as they used to work(unsure on this). 4.001 allows for active/active operation -- whichmeans any native multi-pathing should now work -- ie. MPIO and DMP .. (for VxVM DMP, I have not read official pronouncements if ASL/DMP for EVA4/6/8K is certified as well for VCS4.01 EVA3K/5K)

3. On HP-UX/Windows side.. you need to prepare your environments for their native (MPIO for Windows & PVLINKS/AutoPath/DMP for HP-UX)

The upgrade of VCS I think will not be a walk in the park.. There is a checklist on HP's EVA website.. Read it carefully AND please share your experiences.

Hakuna Matata

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Pat Obrien_1
Regular Advisor

Re: EVA5000 to upgrade VCS from 3020 to 4001

Atheer,
Yes you need to upgrade, but 4.001 is optional, 3.025 is min, and recommended is 3.028. 4.001 brings many new challenges besides just swapping active-passive controller operation for active-active controller operation. Yes 4.001 wil allow the eva5k to be used natively, though all multipathing supported options are optional including dmp. Being you already have securepath, you can upgrade to 3.0f for hpux if you select 4X to get multipathing. The active-active controller operation uses the securepath product, but not the subsets you are familiar with as active-active uses autopath sub-product of secure path 3.0f, and make sure you are using the november relaesed version of 3.0f. I have been researching extensively as I have bought 2 eva 8K to be delivered in the next weeks. I am also waiting for the eva5k to 8k hardware upgrades but like you need to get off 3.020. I have upgraded 1 to 3.028 and will be doing several more in the next weeks.
Atheer Tariq
Occasional Advisor

Re: EVA5000 to upgrade VCS from 3020 to 4001

Hello Nelson and and Pat;

I had also got the following information; thought it could be useful to share it:

A1. VCS 4.001 requires Command View v4.1, SMA v2.1.
Does not requires Secure Path as its for active/active controller. SP is optional and still can be used.
If SP is still used then on HPUX nothing will change ( not sure for 100%).
If SP is not used then hardware paths for luns on EVA will change ( lvm and cluster reconfiguration)
No info about Windows

A3. No changes if SP is used ( and paths to luns do not change )
Vincent Fleming
Honored Contributor

Re: EVA5000 to upgrade VCS from 3020 to 4001

You need to be at SP 3.0F for HP-UX, if you use Secure Path.

Also, make special note of this everyone:

You will need to back up and restore the entire array.

...at least that's the way it is for now. I don't know if that will ever change.

Regards,

Vince
No matter where you go, there you are.
Steven Clementi
Honored Contributor

Re: EVA5000 to upgrade VCS from 3020 to 4001

In general... with the upgrade to 4.001, you may also need to re-arragne your fibre cabling to be in a "supported" configuration. You may also have to pay greater attention the the "master and "Slave" controller designation.

Additionally, for Windows... You will probably need to move to full featured MPIO DSM rather than running Secure Path or basic MPIO(which is actually a good thing in my eyes). Again, for Windows... it is not so bad since Secure Path and the Full Featured MPIO can be running at the same time.


If you upgrade to 4.x, don't expect to go back either. You can not downgrade from 4.x to 3.028. You would have to re-initialize the EVA first.


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)
Steven Clementi
Honored Contributor

Re: EVA5000 to upgrade VCS from 3020 to 4001

That is... downgrade without losing all your data.


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)
Mahadev Pednekar
Frequent Advisor

Re: EVA5000 to upgrade VCS from 3020 to 4001

Hi,
I want to know after upgrading VCS to 4.001 will the SP 3.0F will provide single path or multiple path. I came to know in VCS 4.001 autopath is required which provide load balancing but will give 4 paths for each LUN. In that case how to configure cluster lock disk ?

Regards,
Mahadev
Pat Obrien_1
Regular Advisor

Re: EVA5000 to upgrade VCS from 3020 to 4001

Atheer.

If you go to vcs4.X, and keep securepath, everything changes. Everything changes. The 4.X securepath 3.0F will be a completely different dog then the securepath you are used to using. The securepath product at version 3.0f is the old compag securepath product AND the Hp autopath product now together known as secure path. You will no longer user spmgr commands but will be using autopath commands, and the gathering of the multiple paths into 1 device will then be multiple devices, AND the autopath product does not handle failover like the way you are used to if you are really using securepath. You will have to use lvm pvlinks for failover. This is all a fact.
Pat Obrien_1
Regular Advisor

Re: EVA5000 to upgrade VCS from 3020 to 4001

ALL, I have made a mistake in how autopath works in HPUX. It still works differently than securepath, and it does seem to handle failures however I have found a big flaw. In the simplest configuration 2 hba's, dual fabric and a single lun, there are 8 device files which autopath has full control or no control. Half of these device files will be for the non-owning controller and and susceptible to a 40% read penalty in worst case scenario because of how the non-owning controller passes the io to the owning controller and then gets the data back from the owning controller and responds to the requesting hba.

In summary in HPUX 50% of the io will be sent to the non-owning controller and if read intensive will suffer a 40% penalty. You still get marginally better io than a eva5k with securepath.