HP-UX and Dell PowerVault 221S

[Chris Vail · Accepted solution]

I think the error is exactly as described in the message: "Possible causes are improper termination, improper cabling, or malfunctioning hardware" It looks like you've mismatched single-ended hardware with fast/wide SCSI.

This will work, but will work only at a degraded speed, as indicated. You may have the wrong kind of cable: just because it fits does not mean it has the right wires going to the right connector. Also, check the termination. If the SCSI chain is improperly terminated, there really is no telling what might happen--usually it doesn't work at all.

We use that make/model RAID here, but only on Dell products. If you can afford it, dump the Dell and get an HP: at the very minimum it'll then be covered under your warranty or service contract.

Chris

[Brian M Rawlings]

The Dell 221S is an Ultra160 LVD JBOD enclosure, which is not guaranteed to work under HP-UX, but should not actually be having SCSI errors (it would be more that the drives aren't in the disktab, or have firmware that HP hasn't tested, etc). See:

http://www.dell.com/downloads/us/pvaul/scsi.pdf

One thing I noticed is that they have a "split bus module" that allows a split bus mode for clustering, etc. If you have this module, you are probably set up as split bus, and your bus looks terminated but is not.

As Chris pointed out, this is very likely just what the error message says (cable, terminator, etc), but it may be due to config issues, not you leaving a terminator off (not quite that obvious).

Regarding interoperability, let me just say that Ultra LVD is Ultra LVD, that should all work, if all your components are LVD (you might check the terminator, if IT is SE instead of LVD, this symptom could result). But just because the Open SCSI Ultra LVD protocol lets SCSI devices talk, that doesn't mean that all devices are supported on all hosts or OSes.

So, while I hope you get this figured out and working, putting this enclosure on a nice Dell server and putting an HP DS2100 or DS2300 JBOD chassis on your HP 9000 server might pay big dividends.

Regards, --bmr

[Patrice Herault]

Great,

It's exactly what I think, but the price of DELL's storage is less expensive than HP's storage.

And I don't have the last choice in case of money ...

Thanks again.

Patrice.