EVA 4400 Controller Firmware Upgrade....Do I need to take down my virtual and physical environme

[wavegeek1]

We will be upgrading the firmware on our EVA 4400 to the latest build. We have a number of physical servers running SQL and Exchange with the databases sitting on our EVA 4400. We also have our ESX 4.1 environment connected to the EVA 4400. Can the firmware upgrade for the controllers be done on-line so I do not have to take down my physical servers or my virtual environment?

Thanks,

Alex

[Steven Clementi]

Alex:

What version of XCS are you currently at?

There will definitely be portions of the upgrade that you can do online, but without knowing what XCS you are currently at. no one can tell you what type of upgrade you need to do (online vs. offline).

[wavegeek1]

We are on version 09534000.

Thanks,

alex

[Steven Clementi]

An online upgrade from 09.53.40.00 to 10.00.10.00 or 10.10.00.00 is supported.  Be aware that 10.10.00.00 is not generally available anymore to the public.  The newest XCS is 11.00.10.00 which right now for the EVA4400 is still in Controlled Release, or was at least a week or 2 ago.

There are some requirements that you need to adhere to though when dealing with virtual environments.

Make sure you read the Upgrade guides that come with the docs.

Some older Operating Systems had different/lower disk timeout settings.  You may need to review registry settings on Windows 2003 and earlier VM's... and/or linux vm's to make sure your vm's will not time out while trying to access their disks while the controllers reboot.

The best scenario is where you can shutdown your servers and take a full maintenance window.  I understand the need to keep things running though.  I help manage a similar environment (3 EVA 44/6400's) where data access is key to the operation of the environment.

[wavegeek1]

Thanks. Did you end up taking down all or parts of your environment for controller firmware upgrades?

alex

[Steven Clementi]

I have not upgraded yet, but I am planning it out now.

The difference for me is.. the primary EVA (the 6400) is replicating to the other 2 EVA4400's.  I'll be able to keep all my important data access online by failing over i/o to the replicated data and do an offline upgrade (well, mostly offline).

[giladzzz]

Hi

There is an EVA online upgrade document I enclosed a copy

usually a rule of the thumb is to open EVAPERF write the command

evaperf  as -cont 5 look at the output and calculate

MB/s_Threshold = 0.4167 * Number_of_Physical_Disk
IOPS_Threshold = 41.67 * Number_of_Physical_Disk

Regards

give a kudo if you liked

[wavegeek1]

I am having a problem locating the lastest firmware for the EVA4400 as well as Command View 10.  Anyone have any links to those pages?

Thanks,

alex

[Steven Clementi]

software.hp.com... under HP Storage (Demo/Eval software for CV and Recovery Images for XCS)