EVA VCS 3.100 Warning!!!

[Alzhy]

Just to share our experiences ---- Please avoid upgrades to EVA VCS 3.100 (yet). We had 2 EVA5000s that were recommended by HP to be upgraded to VCS 3.100 from 3.0.28 and huge huge problems observed! It significantly slowed down the EVAs whilst ComamndView virtually was unusable!


Anyone out there experienced the same issue(s)!?

[Ivan Ferreira]

Whe passed directly from 3028 to 4004, that was the HP recommendation for US. No mayor problems with this version.

[Alzhy]

Ivan,

That was also our plan so we could do away with SecurePath and jus rely on VxVM DMP, PVLINKS or MPIO. However, HP came out with an anoucement forbidding customers to hold off on VCS 4.004 upgrades.

How's VCS 4.004 so far working for you? Are you using VxVM or just PVLINKS/AutoPath (aka SecurePath for Active/Active)? Do you also have Windows/vMware hosts in the mix?

[Ivan Ferreira]

>>> How's VCS 4.004 so far working for you? Are you using VxVM or just PVLINKS/AutoPath (aka SecurePath for Active/Active)? Do you also have Windows/vMware hosts in the mix?

Sorry for the late answer.

VCS 4.004 is working good for US so far. One issue with one storage, a controller reboot, that was supposed to be caused by a old disk firmware (this looks like a joke!).

We don't use HP-UX, we use Windows and Tru64 Unix. Windows uses MPIO and tru64 multipath support is in the kernel.

Vmware hosts will be installed in a few weeks, right now, none.

[Pshedges]

Luckily for us Level 3 engineering within HP advised at the last moment not to go to 3.100, due to some issues.

[Sheriff Andy]

Nelson,

Thank you for bringing this to everyones attention.

We are going from 3.025 to 3.028 this weekend, for 2 reasons.

1) So we are under support.
2) Because we have had some issues with some database corruption & are going to 3.028 to see if this corrects the issue.

Why were you recommended to go to 3.100?

Andy

[Ivan Ferreira]

Ok, today, Feb 23, new Eva5k VCS 4 issue. Again, one controller reboot and the message "soft diagnostic failure". This is the same issue i had last time but whith another EVA. This problem appears to occur after a disk failure.

A new case will be open.

[Grzegorz Karnaś]

Hi,
We upgraded 2 EVAs 5k to v3.100. One EVA has loop switches other one has not. Customer has got performance issue after upgrade on both EVAs but it was getting better and after next 3 days performance looks nearly fine but:
- EVA without loop switches - now it is working fine.

- EVA with loop switches - it is working fine for some hours and after that it receives a lot of following warnings: "An outbound frame targeted to a physical disk drive has timed out. Corrective action code: 47" There are warnings one by one every 3 to 10 seconds. During this warnings performance of that EVA dropped down drastically. After next 5 - 10 minutes warnings stop to be appeared and EVA getting better for next some hours.

We found Customer Advisory c00869972 describing this problem dated on 16 Feb 2007 (It was not on web on 16 Feb 2007 because we checked this page before update!!!).
Now our local HP team decided to downgrade EVA with loop switches to version 3.028. The other one will keep version 3.100 (as described in this advisory).

I hope it will help a bit.

Grzes.

[Ivan Ferreira]

My controller reboot problems seems to be a "limitation of the eva5000". When a disk fails, the controller cannot do a "bypass" and then the controller reboots itself.

The controller stays with a "soft diagnostic failure" error, and the only way to clear that condition is by rebooting "again" the controller.

I'm really disappointed with the EVA5000. I had too many troubles with this product.

[Sheriff Andy]

We ran our upgrade last Saturday to VCS 3.028 from 3.025 with no issues so far.

Will advise if we see any issues.