Connecting Fiber Channel M5214 to HP DL585

[Jonathan Steel]

Help !

I have three DL585 Servers - each is very nice, bought off a "lot" on ebay. Now - the servers were worth every penny - and I was able to get two M5214 arrays - each with 14 x 146Gb 10K Fiber drives.

Now, I don't want to create a full EVA (the cost for the EVA seems pretty substantial) - but I AM thinking about getting hold of an MSA1500 or MSA1000 on ebay. I'm looking for advice in how to utilize the M5214's or just the HDD's from each of the arrays and what to look out for on Ebay so that I can connect up to 4Tb to my DL585's. Preferably, I'd like to be able to connect the array to two of the DL585's - so I can create an Oracle 11g RAC cluster.

I'm looking for advice. Thankyou in advance !

[Greybeard]

sorry to bust that bubble but the MSA uses SCSI disks not FC ones, however you can attach the disk enclosures directly to a FC HBA in the server and see the disks as single entities then use the O/S to configure them. Not a supported setup but we tried it out of curiosity and it works.(helps to have a large workshop with loads of random hardware ;) Since you can try this with a single FC HBA it's not a huge deal to give it a go.

[Carsten Giesenfeld]

Hello Jonathan,

I got exactly the same problem like you. I was able to get an M5214 array with 14 x 146GB 10k Fiber drives and want to connect them to a dl 380 server. I added an HBA (Qlogic 2340) to the dl380 and connect it to the array, but I got no response.

Are you sucessful with your plans to connect the array to the DL585 you got?

Please, i am looking for an advice.

[Bhavnish Kamboj (BK)]

If you are going to connect M5214 directly to FC HBA then as its above mentioned you will see them as independent Fiber channel disks and then you may not be able to get redundancy at disk level as where you will create the raid configuration, bcz there is no controller for it. And S/W raid will not help you in your setip.

[Carsten Giesenfeld]

Hello Bhavnish Kamboj,

you wrote...
"you will see them as independent Fiber channel disks and "...
That is exactly what I want.. It must be possible to create a JBOD out of these discs.
My problem at the moment is, that i cannot see any device connected to the HBA..
By the way, is it possible to get a link to a manual with some technical facts about the M5214?

"..then you may not be able to get redundancy at disk level"
This is correct, but not my goal...

THx for your objektion, but I need advice on the hardware-level.

[Bhavnish Kamboj (BK)]

Hi Carsten,

This setup is not tested by either HP or myself. Sorry to say I tried to dig up more info on this but no luck.

But as greybeard said above he was able to see all disks as independent. So probably you can directly email him and check.

Technical manual of M5214 will also not help in this case as it is not designed to work in this way.

[Carsten Giesenfeld]

Hello Bhavnish,

thank you for tryin' to digg more info for me..
May I have the link to a technical manual? There are different things I want to know such like: On the EMU-Board there are 3 RJ-45's, one of them signed with "only RS 232". I will try to connect to via serial cable to check the board and various other things, so please, is there a possibility to get the manual?

I tried to mail to Greybeard directly, but there is no way to do so, even not in his profile. Is it possible to send him a PM through the forum?

Its something strange, the HBA always give back a "No device", but the link to the M5214 is at status "LINK is up". I am using a standard SFP-LC 850nm, which is working normally in another configuration. The QLogic HBA Card works well, also the driver does.
The M5214 shows a green link, all HD's, too. There is no error message anywhere else.

I hope "Greybeard" reads this and could give me a hint.

Thx, Carsten

[Bhavnish Kamboj (BK)]

Hi Carsten,

Below link have some info which may be useful for you as you are looking for M5214 manual. In below link you can find the info like which port is used for what purpose.

And even if you get success in login to M5214, you wouldn't get anything as there is no guide of commands, its only for engineering and testing purpose for core engineering deptt.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c00365591