MSA1000 on HP-UX 11.00

[Rajasekhar Raman]

Will an MSA1000 array work as a DAS on HP-UX 11.00 box? We are currently looking into one. The solution seems to lend itself to a great degree of scalability. One that fits into our budget and plans for future expansion. We intend to upgrade the OS to 11.11 sometime mid-year but currently are really in need for a fault-tolerant storage array which can be of later use if we choose to upgrade to a SAN.

Any comments/suggestions are appreciated.

[Uwe Zessin · Accepted solution]

According to the specifications

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11033_div/11033_div.html

HP-UX 11.0 is not supported. Unless somebody else has tried it already and especially if there are problems, you are on your own.

You can make a direct connection through a fibre channel I/O module, if that is what you mean by 'DAS'. Direct Attached Storage usually implies the use of parallel SCSI, but the 'direct connection' I am talking about still needs a fibre channel adapter (you will run FC_AL protocoll in that case).

[Rajasekhar Raman]

Thanks for your answer. I have another question which is related to my original one. What if the MSA1000 were connected to a SAN switch. Would I then be able to utilize it from my HP-UX 11.00 server (which does have a Fibre I/O card on it )

-Shekar

[Uwe Zessin]

Unfortunately, HP-UX 11.0 is not supported in any way, whatever you choose as an interconnect, sorry :-(

[Stephen Kebbell]

Hello,

just to add that you would only be able to use one Fibrechannel adapter connected to one MSA controller (via 1 I/O Module and/or 1 switch). In the supported versions of HP-UX, the MSA is currently only supported in single-controller configurations. So it will only have limited fault-tolerance (disks, power supplies). No redundant MSA controllers, FC adpaters or paths are supported.

Regards,
Stephen

[Stephen Nelson]

Does anyone know WHEN there will be a fix for this??? i.e. the support for dual redundant controllers????? We have all of the above mentioned needs, but really need the fail over in the controller also...

[Uwe Zessin]

From discussions, I got the impression that the MSA engineers are working on active/active controllers in the style of VA or XP arrays, meaning that one can do I/Os over both controllers. That would mean that one can use PVLINKS and does not need to buy Secure Path.

Of course that's a bit more work then a "simple" controller failover support via Secure path. On the timing? I don't know and I don't give anything about "unofficial" information. Almost every date for a new feature I have been told since the introduction of the MSA1000 so far turned out to be wrong :-(