A3404A SWAP with A6685A hba

[Nikee Reddy]

Hello,

At present we have A3404A hba cads installed on k380 & K580 HP servers. Unfortunately these hba cards supports only the private loop (fc-al) mode. We have decided to swap these cards with HP-HSC Fibre Channel Adapter A6685A hba's.

We are planning to hook-up these cards to a DS24M2 switch on the other end.

Do I need to takecare any measurements before we migrate these hba cards?

Am I going to face any problems after the migartion?

Thanks & regards,
Nikee

[Michael Tully · Accepted solution]

One thing is certain. Your device numbering will change. Going from private loop to fabric, you *will* need to take a vgexport of your existing volume groups. Once you have these files (mapfiles, see the man pages) you can after doing your zoning, ioscans etc, you can vgimport the volume groups back in using these mapfiles. Obviously take the proper precautions and have backups. Take a snapshot of your existing 'ioscan-fn' output prior to starting.

This should work:
vgexport -m vg.mapfile -v -s /dev/myvg

to import

vgimport -v -m vg.mapfile -p -s /dev/myvg
If there are no errors run the command and omit the -p option, which is for the preview.

[Nikee Reddy]

Hello Michael,

Instead of vgexport and import how about changing the device control number using the command insf?

Thanks,
Nikee

[Michael Tully]

If you change the controller numbers using insf, they will then have a different set of numbers to what is held in your LVM information. You may end up corrupting LVM totally. To be honest, I wouldn't attempt this, I would use the vgexport/vgimport every time. I've used this method many times and always with success. As long you can identify your volumes group IDS (see vgchgid for an explanation) you will be able to vgimport.