SMI-S agent Zoning errors when allocating SAN Storage

[gordonf]

Hi,

I am a storage guy trying to get Oneview working for storage allocation.

We have Oneview 1.20, and I have a server set up with the HP/Brocade Netowork Advisor SMI-S agent 12.4.2

(SMI-S agent only type of install)

The storage array is a 3PAR.

From a communications point of view, everything seems to talk to each other. The 3PAR is registered into OneView (and does create the volume requested), the SAN Manager is set up and picks up the fabric names that I configured in SMI-S.

However, when I try to do a SAN storage allocation from Oneview, it seems to complete without error but then reports: "Storage paths for volume attachment for the volume xxxxx have lost connectivity to the server".

When I check on my SAN switches there does not appear to be any activity that has happened in the logs (or any new zones created). When I check on the server that has SMI-S installed (there is nothing else running on this server) I see in the Network Adviser logs the error message "Device enclosure could not be created automatically due to unavailability of host name for the adapters" this message is then ended with a list of 4x WWNs that appear to be in the NPIV range that the blades use, but are not close enough to be with just the last few digits (ie like I would see when looking at WWNN and WWPN).

Does anyone have any ideas as to what may be up here and how I can resolve this issue.

Thanks

[ChrisLynch]

Hello @gordonf, and welcome to the HPE OneView Community Forums.

The BNA 12.4.2 version is only supported with the HPE OneView 2.0 release.  The maximum version supported by HPE OneView 1.20.x is Brocade SAN Network Advisor 12.3.4, as documented in the HPE OneView 1.20 Support Matrix, on Page 13.

[gordonf]

Thanks for the info Chris.

I tried this (ended up installing the full package - including SMI agent under a trial licence  as the free SMIversion under 12.3.4 kept displaying the "License expired" message as soon as I looged in to configure it).

 However it still does not work and I get simila meesages at the BNA end.

Is there any better logs at the Oneview side that I can drill in to to see what it is up to and how far it is getting. before it falls over, outside of just the "Detail" on the activity.
When I refresh the SAN Storage connection, this does not give me any fail conditions; until it shows the connectivity issues with the server and storage later.

Thanks,
Gordon

[ChrisLynch]

If you are getting LIcense Expired, then BNA isn't going to work in that mode.  HPE OneView only interacts with the SMI-S Agent.  So you aren't going to gain any additional functionality with OneView if you install the Professional or Enterprise version of BNA.  You may want to build a new Windows or Linux VM/server to dedicate to BNA.  Even with a small SAN environment, say 2 Fabrics, I would make sure your dedicated BNA VM/server has 2 CPU and no less than 16GB of RAM.

[gordonf · Accepted solution]

OK.

I have figured this out.
When I was having issues with the free SMI-S agent only version of Network Advisor, I had to re-install it a couple of times (basically when configuring I had inadvertently clicked on the tab for "SAN" and when doing this the "License Expired" message came up and any further access to the application was similarly blocked. The only way to resolve this was to re-install and make sure I or anyone else didn't click that same tab again - which did happen...)

Anyway, I would re-install and create the same user account, the same fabric names to manage, etc so that the SAN Manager credentials could still access it as the same entity. However I believe that under the covers this wasn't necessarily the case and although the login credentials would access and work, when it got to deeper layers of access and zoning, it may not have been recognising this as the same thing. At least this is my assumption.

So, my fix was to delete the SAN Manager in OneView, then add it back in again, then refresh the SAN-A, SAN-B that I had under the Networks FC settings by removing and re-reselecting the fabric names that are imported in SAN Manager.
Once I had done this, hey presto, it worked.

Enjoy,
Gordon