EVA5000 and EVA8000 Co-Existence

[Nicole Angelis]

Hi All,

We have just received a new EVA8000 to install along side our existing EVA5000. We also have an SMA III running Command View 3.x. I know that we will need to upgrade Command View on the management appliance to at least 4.1 to be able to manage the EVA8000. However, some of our admins seem to be in disagreement when it comes to physically connecting the EVA8000. The zoning is pretty simple and we are all in agreement how it should be zoned in reference to the SMA. The disagreement we are facing is this: One of our admins, says we should purchase additional 4Gb HBAs, for our servers and dedicate those HBAs to the EVA8000. On the other hand, the other admin says the EVA8000 and the EVA5000 can easily be zoned to the same HBA. I am caught in the middle since I see both may be right. In order to fully maximize the 4Gb host ports on the EVA8000, it makes sense to install new 4Gb HBAs. However, could you not zone the EVA8000 and EVA5000 to the existing 2Gb HBAs on servers which are hardly saturating those HBAs?

I recommended installing 4Gb HBAs on our heavily used database servers and dedicate those HBAs to the EVA8000, while sharing the HBAs between the EVA8000 and EVA5000 in test or development servers. I would like to know if anyone has a similar situation or if anyone has any feedback.

Thanks for your advice!

-Nicole

[The Spartan]

Hi Nicole,

Your solution seems fine however note -
run securepath(4.0c sp2-5
) for 5k and mpio-FF for 8k on the same host - considering they are windows host in order to avoid M/P issues.

Also I would prefer dedicated HBAs to EVAs rather than sharing as the same helps in understanding and thus t/s.

Regds.

[Stephen Kebbell · Accepted solution]

Hi,

we had a similar situation. And I would go with your recommendation: dedicated HBAs for the large production servers, and you can share HBAs on your development/test machines. You don't say what OS you are using, the Spartan is referring to Windows environments for Multipathing.

We got a bunch of new storage here (EMC Clariion and Symmetrix) to add to our existing environment (mostly HDS Thunder). For our large HP-UX Oracle DBs we got extra 4Gb HBAs and they are only zoned to the Symmetrix. Other no-so-important HP-UX machines have both types of storage mapped to common HBAs. For Windows machines, we have zoned the HBAs to HDS and Clariion storage and have had no problems (although ususally only for a short while for migration). The different multipathing packages (HDLM, PowerPath) could co-exist on the same Windows host. SecurePath and MPIO can also co-exist on the same Windows Host, I have seen it working before.

Regards,
Stephen

[RayB_1]

I would put the latest firmware 6.x on the EVA XCS 8000 which means you need command view 6.x, MPIO 2.00.02 (Windows).

If you have EVA 8000 XCS 5.110 then you need CV to be at least 5.0x or greater.

/ray

[Steven Clementi]

Nicole:

My first suggestion is that you wipe out your SMA and install Windows Server 2003 Standard on it and CV-EVA6. (Unless of course you are utilizing the SMA software along with OV_SAM and it's other functionality. If not, dump the OS and rebuild it... it's worth the effort.)

What does your switch infrastructure look like? Do you have 2GB switches? or 4GB switches? or both?

Zoning the 2 storage arrays to the same HBA is doable. It is not suggested only in the sense that you may end up saturating those hba's if you have heavily utilized storage from both EVA's. If your utilization is light, it should work with no problem.

On your windows hosts, you will need to run both SecurePath and MPIOff as suggested. It is supported and it does work.

I agree with your recommendation. Make sure your production environment is sound and not overworked. Save the money in your test/dev environments.

ALl you need is 1 zone for your SMA to manage the 2 EVA's. For your hosts, you might want to consider 2 zones. 1 for EVA1 and 1 for EVA2 (2 zones per host).


Steven

[Nicole Angelis]

Thank you all for your suggestions and agreeing with my recommendation. We do have a 4Gb infrastructure, even though we still have several 2Gb switches in our SAN.
We ended up installing 4Gb HBAs in our most important servers and dedicating those HBAs to the EVA8000. In the end, only 6 servers are sharing HBAs with the EVA5000 and EVA8000; so far every thing is working fine. :)

Again, thanks to everyone who responded!

-Nicole