2x MSA-1000 active/active serving 2 distinct groups of servers

[Bruno Facca]

A client of mine has a MSA 1000 and 4 Proliant DL 370 connected to it via embedded 2/8 SAN switch. This is their production setup.

I need to install a second MSA 1000 controller, active-active, plus a second embedded MSA 2/8 SAN switch (to be able to connect 14 servers to the storage, NOT for redundancy) and connect a different set of servers to the second controller.

What would be the steps involved in doing this change (without loosing any data), after phisically installing the controller, the switch and upgrading the controllers' firmware to active/active?

Thanks in advance
Bruno Facca

[pasquino bocci_1]

Hi,

If you plan to connect the switches together, only 12 ports will be available.

Just check the FW revision of the MSA, the switch, assign different Domain ID on the new switches.
Pasquino

[Bruno Facca]

Hi,

>If you plan to connect the switches together,
>only 12 ports will be available.
In this case I'm not aware of any benefits of ISLing the switches, are there any? Aren't the switches already connected to the controllers via chassis? As far as I know, each switch only needs to talk to one single controller. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Thank you
Bruno Facca

[Bruno Facca]

To clarify more: I need to put the switches in an "active/active" configuration, if there is such a thing. If I ISL them, one of them will be the "first level" (with I/O priority) and the other one will be the "second level", I'm trying to avoid that and also benefit from the performance increase of using 2 controllers in active/active configuration.

Bruno Facca

[pasquino bocci_1]

Hi,

Download the latest FW ACTIVE/ACTIVE for the MSA1000:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=3302289&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=377751&swLang=13&taskId=135&swEnvOID=1005
Download MPIO FULL FEATURED for MSA:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=421495&prodTypeId=18964&prodSeriesId=421492&swLang=13&taskId=135&swEnvOID=1005


If you don't need to connect the news servers to the old MSA, ISL is not necessary.
Pasquino

[Bruno Facca]

Thanks for the links.

As I said in my first post, I need to "connect a different set of servers to the second controller" (via the second switch). I don't need the same servers to see both switches and/or both controllers, also the servers only have 1 FC port each, so AFAIK MPIO doesn't apply.

I'm sorry if I'm not expressing myself correctly (english is not my native language). The main points here are:

** Being able to connect 14 unique servers to the MSA-1000 storage system (7 on each switch) and using the resources of both controllers for increased performance ***.

It makes no difference (AFAIK) if the servers connected to switch A only talk to controller A and the servers connected to switch B only talk to controller B or if they all talk to each other.

Thank you
Bruno Facca

[pasquino bocci_1]

Hi, no problems to do what you want.
But if you use the ACTIVE/ACTIVE configuration on the MSA, you'll need full featured mpio.
Pasquino

[Bruno Facca]

Ok, so I would need to:

1 - Install the second switch and assing a different Domain ID to it.

2 - Install the second controller and flash it with the latest active/active firmware.

3 - Install MPIO full featured on all Windows servers (those currently working and the future ones)

4 - Connect the new servers to the second (new) switch.

Is that correct? What about the Linux servers, there isn't MPIO for Linux. Would the Qlogic driver do it?

Thank you

[pasquino bocci_1]

Hi,
1) if you don't join the switch together, you can avoid to change the domain id, but if you plan to join them in the future, assign a different domain id
2) for Linux, download the driver from the HP site and install it with the option -f ( enable failover)
Pasquino