How to Power Down an HP VA Orderedly?

[Ralph Grothe]

Hi,

this may sound stupid.

I need to disconnect a third party system from the mains which consists of 2 RP7410 that form an MC/SG cluster with attached Cu SAN storage provided by an HP Virtual Array, contained all in one unit together with its own SAN switch
(which I am sure has a managment interface as well but whose connection details and access credentials I don't know)

I wouldn't want to call this all-in-one-box-arrangement pure HA despite the clustering SW overhead.

Unlike all our other cluster systems which contract their shared storage from our data center SAN fabric
this one is pretty isolated.

I have no RAID management experience with this particular VA, as this is as mentioned a 3rd party plague brought on us.

I would simply cmhaltcl the cluster and shutdown the nodes.
Albeit, I am not sure if it is safe to press the power off switch for the RAID Box afterwards,
silently assuming that the disks aren't accessed anymore and all meta data has been flushed.

I skimmed most manpages of the arm* management commands,
hoping to discover something similar to shutdown for the VA,
which hasn't been the case, or I have merely missed it.

Regards
RAlph

[Torsten. · Accepted solution]

Hi Ralph,

several methods:

1) armmgr -s shut

2) shutdown from the virtual front panel (serial connection)

3) stop host access and push the button


From the manual:

"A shutdown is automatically initiated in two ways:

- By moving the power/standby switch to the standby position.

- Using the array management software.


Note:

Using software to perform a shutdown is the preferred method because confirmation of a successful shutdown is reported to the
operator."

[Ralph Grothe]

Ah, I overlooked the armmgr command.
Ithink what sounds suited would be something like

# armmgr -s shut

Is it that easy?

[Ralph Grothe]

Hi Torsten,

I must have been editing the textarea while you were submitting.

So my thought was right?

When I later start the array
would it suffice to

# armmgr -s start

or would I need to initiate some autobuild or similar?

[Torsten.]

If you use "armmgr" to shutdown the array, it will go in a shutdown status, but it will remain powered. You can safely power off the device now or restart it (start command). If you power on again, it will automatically start up.

IMHO it would be enough to press the button, because the hosts are already down and the cache is flashed.

[Ralph Grothe]

I would now run this on stop:


# armmgr -s shut $(armdsp -i $(uname -n)|awk '/Unique ID:/{print$NF}')


and likewise on start:


# armmgr -s start $(armdsp -i $(uname -n)|awk '/Unique ID:/{print$NF}')

[Torsten.]

Yes, if you don't want to power of the device these steps are good to go ...