HP MSA 1500 SAN and Windows Server 2003

[James Harris_5]

Here is the screen shot. I guess I am unclear within SSP how I would configure each server to access a logical drive. I know within SSP you can select the controller ID and select the logical drives which will have access to it. I was seeing three controller IDs. Two of which were online and one was offline. One was the MSA 1000. I am not sure which ones were the others.

[Steven Clementi]

In the SSP screen, what you see is the World Wide Id's of your Host bus Adaptors. Each entry is specific to each server. Online means the host is running and the driver is loaded. Offline, well, is the driver is not loaded or the host id tyurned off, or there is a nother problem.

To use SSP, once you figure out which server is which, you enable LUN access by just checking the checkbox under the Logical Drive number at the top. Ultimately, you should have something like this...

Hosts Lun 1 2 3 4
Host 1........X
Host 2...........X
Host 3..............X
Host 4.................X


You can use the hba utilities to find your WWID's. LPutilnt (for Emulex) or HBAnywhere. or physically as the id should be stamped on the card somewhere.


Steven

[Uwe Zessin]

James,
the MSA1000 /1500 always presents a non-disk SCSI LUN at address #0. That way, you always have management access to the array, even if that particular server does not have a logical disk mapped.

Think about it: when you started, the array did not have any logical disks. How could the server talk to the array? -- Via LUN 0!

[James Harris_5]

Thanks for all your help. I have the SAN working. I will look into the one adapter being offline.

[Stephen Kebbell]

Hi James,

for the MSA, it's normal to have some adapters "offline". This is because the MSA controllers work in active/passive failover mode. The HBA that is connected to the switch where the passive controller is located will show as offline until a failover occurs. In the SSP setup of ACU, you will see the adapters listed as Local (the server which is running ACU) or remote, and online or offline.

Do you currently have 2 servers with 2 HBAs each connected to the MSA? I would guess that your three connections are described in the SSP section as "Local/Online", "Local/Offline" and "Remote/Online". The WWN of the MSA itself does not show up in this list, only WWNs of attached HBAs. It won't see the 2nd HBA in any "remote" server until you either run ACU locally on that server (close ACU on the first server beforehand), or a controller failover occurs. It's an annoying problem with the MSA, but I haven't found any other way around it.

Regards,
Stephen

[Stephen Kebbell]

Sorry, forgot to mention that you only need to run ACU on each server once so that both HBAs get entered in the connection list. After that, it will properly show any "Remote/Offline" connections.

Stephen

[Uwe Zessin]

I do not know why some connections appear as offline, but I have an example with 2 OpenVMS hosts connected to a two-controller MSA and all four connections appear as online.

Reminds me a bit about the online/offline field on the HSG which sometimes doesn't properly reflect the situation, either.

[James Harris_5]

I managed to track down the WWID for each HBA. I failed to mention I am running the SAN in a Blade environment. We have a rack with BL 10E and 20 P Servers. The 20P's have the connection to the SAN through a switch. Two of the ID's, "Local Online and Local Offline," in the screen shot are from the blade hosting the ACU and the third ID, "remote online," is from a blade next to it. The one local offline is from the blade hosting the ACU. So I guess the HBA's in the blade only have one active at a time. The other is for failover. Should I enable the local offline HBA to have access to the same logical drive I enabled access to the Local Online HBA? In the event the first HBA fails so it can access the Logical drive?

[James Harris_5]

One other question. Is there another way to get the WWID of the HBA without having to pull the cover of the blade server? What about the WWID of the MSA1000?

[Steven Clementi]

"One other question. Is there another way to get the WWID of the HBA without having to pull the cover of the blade server? What about the WWID of the MSA1000? "

Yes.


On the blades, the utility HBAnywhere should help you out. (or any server with a QLogic HBA)

Any server with an Emulex hba, the utility LPUtilnt would be helpful.


Additionally, if you have the 8port MSA switch, then I believe you can look at the name server to see the WWID's of all attached devices, including the MSA. You should also be able to "View More Information" on the controiller screen in the ACU and the WWID should be there. (I think).


Steven