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тАО06-27-2006 02:36 AM
тАО06-27-2006 02:36 AM
Re: MSA1500 redundancy
"43 Redundancy failed hardware failure"
From our point of view, the array is now 'dead'. Software and disk access no longer communicate with the MSA controller.
Shouldn't the standby controller become active and indicate that it is ready for use?
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тАО06-27-2006 02:53 AM
тАО06-27-2006 02:53 AM
Re: MSA1500 redundancy
hang on, do you only have one SAN switch ? If so, your configuration is not a supported one. The rule for the MSA is either single everything or dual everything (HBAs, Switches, Controllers). Nothing in between is supported (even if it does seem to work). Also, you mention you have a mixed environment - I assume this means different OSes. This usually means you NEED zoning on the switch(es). You may run into problems if you do not keep different operating systems in separate zones.
To test controller failover, you could connect the serial cable to the front of the active controller and use the CLI to disable the controller. The command is:
disable this_controller
From the user guide: "In a dual-controller system, this command disables one of the controllers to prepare it for removal. When a controller is disabled, all resources being processed by that controller are automatically failed over to the remaining controller. After a controller has been successfully disabled, the LCD panel displays a message stating that it is safe for that controller to be removed."
The CLI User Guide can be found here:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00683579/c00683579.pdf
Note: I hope this command is supported in your firmware version. I can't say for sure.
Regards,
Stephen
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тАО06-27-2006 02:53 AM
тАО06-27-2006 02:53 AM
Re: MSA1500 redundancy
Hope this helps!
Regards
Torsten.
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тАО06-27-2006 03:53 AM
тАО06-27-2006 03:53 AM
Re: MSA1500 redundancy
Our firmware (5.02 and 5.10) only allows the standby controller to be disabled.
Fair point on the redundancy supported by HP: all single path or all redundant. In the past with our HP virtual arrays, we've used a mix redundancy situation - some servers are single path and some are dual path, but the controllers are always dual path. I think we expected the same of the MSA even though all of our servers are likely to be single pathed - we still expected the MSA 'backplane' to handle communication between the FC I/O cards and each controller.
Is it true then that: MSA FC I/O cards only communicate with one controller and any use of the standby controller must use multi-path software?
I've tried installing MPIO on one server, but it fails presumably because it has only one FC HBA.
Any other thoughts welcome, but I think it is beginning to be very clear.
Thanks
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тАО06-27-2006 04:06 AM
тАО06-27-2006 04:06 AM
Re: MSA1500 redundancy
You should now read the documentation carefully and make sure you meet all requirements regarding number and model of HBAs, drivers, SAN connection/cabling, software and so on. In case of doubt ask here or open a call with HP.
Hope this helps!
Regards
Torsten.
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There are only 10 types of people in the world -
those who understand binary, and those who don't.
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тАО06-27-2006 04:31 AM
тАО06-27-2006 04:31 AM
SolutionAbsolutely. A host's FC port is only allowed to have access to one of the MSA's controllers and vice versa: an MSA controller must not be accessed by more than one FC host port.
It is not written that way in the documentation, but if you scroll back some time in ITRC's history, you will see quite a number of failures due to breaking these rules.
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тАО06-27-2006 07:49 PM
тАО06-27-2006 07:49 PM
Re: MSA1500 redundancy
Your comment on VA vs EVA being very different - can you explain? In general I know the differences regarding continuous access (replication), sizes, speeds, and product lifetime (EVA is the future), but I take it you were talking about the controller redundancy behavior. Can you tell me more about how the VA and EVA differ in redundancy methods? Thanks in advance.
Uwe - I think you 'hit the nail on the head'. Our assumption which wasn't directly contradicted in the documentation has lead to the whole problem. In hindsight, I would have rather spent my time in the forums than trying to 'fix' something that wasn't broken...
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тАО06-27-2006 08:52 PM
тАО06-27-2006 08:52 PM
Re: MSA1500 redundancy
The EVA uses one or more (up to 16) disk groups. It usually selects the disks itself, but the user can explicitly group/ungroup individual disk drives. The storage ressource (virtual disk) allocates space from a single disk group, but the controller management can change. Both controllers can manage different virtual disks in the same group.
As far as I can tell, the VA has provided 'Active/Active' support from the very beginning and the EVA used the old DEC HSG mode: a single controller allows read/write access to a resource while the second controller maps SCSI LUNs as well, but I/Os cannot be satisfied through these paths.
This has changed with Active/Active firmware for the EVA since some time ago. However: both arrays do work the same way: a single controller does the actual disk I/O (on the VA it is called the 'performance path') for a storage ressource [*] and if you try to access the ressource through the other controller it has to redirect the I/O to the owning controller.
[*] Unlike the MSA controllers with Active/Passive firmware, the other EVA controller can do disk I/O for a different virtual disk, even if it's in the same disk group.
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тАО06-27-2006 10:15 PM
тАО06-27-2006 10:15 PM
Re: MSA1500 redundancy
The 2 controllers are connected to each other to allow communication, of course.
Every controller is connected to all the SCSI busses to be able to access every disk.
The fibre channel connections are dedicated to a single controller, first FC connection only for the first controller, second FC connection for the second controller only.
The main difference between active/passive (e.g. MSA1500 with "old" fw) and active/active (new EVA, VA) is recognizable by the name, I guess.
Hope this helps!
Regards
Torsten.
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тАО06-28-2006 12:11 AM
тАО06-28-2006 12:11 AM
Re: MSA1500 redundancy
I'll leave the thread open in case anyone wants to comment further, but you've cleared up the issue for me - there never was a problem with hardware - it was only with our expectations.
As for the firmware, since we're running Netware, I'll load the firmware that HP recommends; well, it recommends 4.98, but supplies 5.02...
Thanks again for all the help.