HP VLS 6870 and QLogic 2340 HBA card

[Remain Anonymous]

Hi,
I have a HP VLS6870 with 4 FC ports from Qlogic. The software version is 1.1.0. We are also using a Cisco MDS 9020 switch. The tape library has four MSA20 enclosures.

On our backup server, under device manager, under Other Devices, I see three instances of HP VLS SCSI Devices. I have no idea what drivers I need to install for these devices.

The backup server was using a Qlogic driver from May of 2006. I upgraded the driver for QLogic 2340 card to the latest and supposedly greatest. The driver is now from 11/2006 and the version is 9.1.4.10. Before the driver upgrade, I did not see the "HP VLS SCSI devices".

I shut down the VLS6870 and did a rescan for hardware on my backup server. The "HP VLS SCSI devices" went away. But once I power on my tape library, the backup server is detecting the "HP VLS SCSI devices".

I would appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction as to what these devices are and what drivers I should install.

Thanks in advance for any assistance provided.

[Marino Meloni_1]

It may be you have some luns not configured, usualy with Virtual library, you should see only the devices created in the gui, if you create a msl with lto, you will see in device manager the lto tapes and a changer.
Probably what you are seeing are the controllers of the array.
Check if you have some unconfigured space/lun on your vls and configure it first.

[Remain Anonymous]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I'm new to this and I'm not exactly sure which controller you're talking about. I have set the virtual library to emulate ESL-E and LTO3 tape drives. I also see a medium changer in device manager. I believe I have the correct drivers installed.

What I don't understand is that before I upgraded the driver on the QLogic 2340 HBA card, I did not see the HP VLS Scsi Devices. Once I upgraded the QLogic 2340 HBA card to the latest driver, I started seeing these devices. I was able to replicate this by rolling back the driver and re-installing it.

I have attached a screenshot. Hopefully this will better show what I'm talking about.

Even if the controller is misconfigured, does anyone know which driver it is looking for?

Thanks!

[Harry Banbury · Accepted solution]

This is an interesting side effect of having a VLS FC port with no virtual LUNs assigned on that FC port to one or more Host nodes. The real issue is the SCSI spec and how SCSI works... a VLS FC port is equivalent to a SCSI Target device and the virtual devices which are presented on that VLS FC port are equivalent to SCSI LUNs behind that SCSI Target device. SCSI protocol requires that there at least be a LUN 0 behind every SCSI Target. So in the VLS, ifthere is not any VLS devices assigne to a FC port or if LUN Mapping is enablend and there is no LUns mapped to some Host nove via a VLS FC port, then the VLS will present a Controller Type LUN an LUN 0 behind that FC port "Target device". You can think of this VLS LUN as a "place holder" rthat allows the host to send polling and Inquire commands to (an Initiator host cannot send SCSI commands just to a SCSI Target... he has to send them to a SCSI Target/LUN combination). There is no host driver for this VLS "controller" LUN and you can safely ifnore any info messages from Windows asking for a device driver for these VLS controller devices (this will anly happen at Windows boot up time.

Also, any time there is at least 1 VLS virtual device mapped to a VLS FC port for a host, the VLS will not present this VLS comntroller LUN on that FC port... so the correct way to eliminate this Windows info message (if it is really bothersome) is to assign at least one virtual device for every VLS FC port for each visable host node.

Harry Banbury
VLS Product Line CPE Engineer