LUN on VA can't be formatted on NT4.0

[Kurt Beyers.]

Hi,

I've got a VA7400 connected to a HP9000 server running HP-UX11.11

There is also a HP Netserver running NT4.0 with service pack 6a that has two fibre cards. Only one of the fibre cards is connected to the VA7400 via a brocade switch, as Autopath software runs only on Windows2000.

When I launch the disk administrator of NT, it detects the LUN's on the VA. I can assign drive letters to the disks. But when I try to format the disks (quick format NTFS), it fails with the message 'Windows NT was unable to complete the format'.

Is there other software required on the Netserver besides the drivers for the Fibre Channel card?

Thanks,
Kurt

[Vincent Fleming]

Kurt,

No additional software is required on the Windoze side, but on the VA, you need to set the port os behavior for those LUNs.

The VA can be shared among multiple OS systems, but you have to change modes from setting the OS by port to setting the OS by LUN. There's a table you can download to the array listing each LUN and which OS mode to assign it. I forget which command is used to make this setting, and I don't have the docs handy... you you're on your own for now looking it up. It's in the Command View book.

Good luck!

[Kurt Beyers.]

Vincent,

At the moment the VA was/is only connected from one controller to a switch. The other controller isn't connected to a switch yet as the cabling is not yet finished completely.

The first controller (that is connected to the switch) has hpux as OS configured and the other controller has winnt as OS configured (but is not connected yet). Isn't it possible to use more than one OS on a controller. If you have for instance 9 HPUX servers and 1 NT server, you would have to dedicate 1 controller for NT specifically and use the other controller for all of the 9 HPUX servers. And if that controller fails, the 9 servers couldn't connect to the VA LUN's anymore?

Any way, I've connected the dedicated NT controller to the switch and rebooted the NT server. The LUN's had new addresses but I still couldn't format them.

Something else I think about know. All the connections in the VA - switch -servers are 2 GBit, but the fibre card in the NT server is only 1 GBit. Could this cause the problem?

Kurt

[Vincent Fleming]

Kurt,

The VA was not designed to be shared in the manner you suggest. Both controllers should be set to the same OS mode so you have redundant paths to the array.

At least, that's what's expected. It may work with the ports set to different OS settings, but that's not really the way it should be used.

The armhost command is the command I was writing about previously. Read the man page for it (in you CommandView guide, pg 103) for details. The explaination there is pretty good. The basic idea here is that the array has 2 modes of operation in relation to host OS type - port mode, where the port is dedicated to a particular type of host (homogenous environments) or host table mode, where you make up a table and load it via the armhost command (hetro environments).

The HBA in the server should be OK at 1Gb as the switch should be autosensing and speed-matching. (a Brocade 3800 or F16B will speed-match.)

You haven't said what HBA's you're using. Are they the HP ones or some other brand? (several brands are supported)

[Kurt Beyers.]

Vincent,

It is a HP Netserver with a HP HBA into it and a FC8B switch, so HP from start to the end.

I'll have a look at the man pages of armhost tomorrow. But it should be possible to connect different operating systems to the same VA.

BTW, this is the same VA7400 as in my other thread (LUN id > 7 not seen on HPUX). The LUN id's for the NT server are 31, 32 and 33 and are detected by NT without any problem. So this suggest to a problem in HP-UX and not VA related.

Kurt

[Vincent Fleming]

The VA can support more than one OS at a time, and the armhost command is how that feature is implemented. I'm starting to think that may be a major contributor to your problem, possibly on both sides, HP-UX and NT.

I'll look for your responses tomorrow.

[Marco Hogeveen]

Kurt,

First of all, Autopath for Windows NT4 DOES exist, take a look at http://www.hp.com/cposupport/manindex/hpsurestor64115_eng_man.html .

Second: do you have Secure Manager enabled?
If you do, does the WWN of the FC-HBA in the Netserver has WC (write config) access to Lun 0?
Every host connected to the VA should have WC access to Lun0, Lun0 can be very small (like 10MB) and should not contain any data or file system.

Have you tried a normal format, instead of a Quick format?
What's the version of the driver you're using in the Netserver?
Look at c:\winnt\system32\drivers\afcnt4.sys right click, properties...

Do you have any additional hotfixes installed beside SP6a?

Marco

[Kurt Beyers.]

Vincent,

After reading the man pages of armhost, I agree that this will be the cause why the format from an NT server fails as the default behaviour of the controller is HPUX. But it doesn't explain why I can't see any LUN's with an id > 7 on HPUX. I won't be able to upload tha host table until next week. I'll keep the thread updated.

Marco,

Secure Manager is setup correctly, I'm sure about that. I'll have a look at the auto path software for NT. In the documentation that I've got, only Windows2000 was stated as a supported OS.

Kurt

[Kurt Beyers.]

I did the following steps:

-set the default OS for both controllers to HPUX
-uploaded with armhost the host table in which I've specified what kind of OS is behind which fibre card.
-deleted and recreated the LUN's for the Netserver
-uploaded the security table to the VA so that the Netserver has write rights on the LUN's
-rebooted the NT server.

After the reboot, the format still fails:

-File System Type: NTFS
-Default Allocation Size

I start the format, the progress balk of the format process grows until it reaches the end and then I get the message 'Windows NT was unable to complete the format'. If I want to open the disk in an explorer, Windows can't recognize the file system type of the LUN.

I've added the following settings to the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\AFCNT4\PArameters\Device
LargeLuns 1
NumberOfRequests 224
InitAsNport 1
RelyOnLossSyncStatus 0

The last two DWORDS were added, the first two were already present.

After a reboot of the server, the format of the LUN's still failed with the same error.

Has anybody some other suggestions left?

Thanks,
Kurt

[Vincent Fleming]

Kurt,

If I'm reading this correctly, you did the armhost thing, then deleted the NT LUNs and re-created them.

I would try the armhost command again - deleting and re-creating the LUNs may have automatically reset the table. I haven't done things in that order before... so I'm not sure, but it should be easy enough to try. Let us know what happens.