HP MSA 2040 ES SAN and Citrix XenServer - why not certified?

[cgiesers]

Hey guys!

It seems to be almost impossible to get someone with real knowledge.

Out gold partner can't help me, the twitter support is just pointing "somewhere" instead of giving me a contact...

We plan to upgrade our server/storage and want to buy an MSA2040 storage, connected via FC16G to our HP DL380s.

Since we're using XenServer ever since, of course we want to keep it there. I can see, that some MSAs are certified to work with XenServer, others not. Several other solutions like 3par, VSA, P4000/Lefthand are also.

Since XenServer is based on CentOS, which is similar to RedHat RHEL (which is certified to all MSAs), it should work. From what I read on the web, ppl. are also using that combo - but may struggle when it comes to support cases.

Also... it's just an FC-Target, as long as the HBA is supported (which is), I don't know what else could be important (respective: why).

Is there anyone out here, who can tell my, why the MSA2040 isn't listed/tested or who/where to ask for details?

The HPE chat is just to be used with S/N, which I, of course, don't have atm. - and to be honest: I don't expect anything form them, it would more need level 3 support or even a developer. I just don't see how to catch one.

Thanks for any help in advance.

- Christof

[CalvinZito]

I can't tell you why it isn't supported but the engineering team confirmed that it is not and they don't have plans to support it. There really isn't much more to say than that. The team prioritizes features and testing and they decided they wouldn't support the MSA 2040 with Citrix.  

I was in touch with some of the storage team in Germany - I assume they've been in touch with you?

[poetterli]

Hi Christof

Since the the new MSA Series (1040 / 2040) were release by HPE I asked me the same thing!
And I got ever the same answer like HPEStorageGuy wrotes: "No plans to support Citrix XenServer".
HPE focussed to VMware ESX and MS Hyper-V with this products.

But today I saw in the compatibility matrix of HPE SPOCK it seems that MSA is now supported with
Citrix XenServer (see attached picture). There is just something "special" if you look into the details
for MSA - XenServer 7 compatibility: Under OS is XenServer 6.5 listed!

But anyway - it seems that HPE is gooing to support MSA with XenServer.

Greetings
Patrik

[cgiesers]

Hey Patrik!

Thanks for your update/post to that. We solved that by adding XenServer support to our Care Pack/support contract.

Maybe this and some more requests ended up in an official support?

Not sure why they add the note for the (legacy) 6.5 Version, but I remember that they also needed some time to offer SNMP agents for XenServer 7. Maybe they start with validating 6.5 and go on with 7 then? Until new hardware goes live, we also still run 6.5 in production (like not so few others, as I see in the bugtracker).

Regarsds

 - Christof

[cgiesers]

---

@CalvinZito wrote:

I can't tell you why it isn't supported but the engineering team confirmed that it is not and they don't have plans to support it. There really isn't much more to say than that. The team prioritizes features and testing and they decided they wouldn't support the MSA 2040 with Citrix.  

I was in touch with some of the storage team in Germany - I assume they've been in touch with you?

---

Hey Calvin!

As to clear it up here too (maybe other ppl. are interested): Yes, we had contact and originally they confirmed what you wrote: No planed support - due to not enough interest in that combination/a lack of requests for that.

The solution he adviced: Adding support to the support/project, which common stuff for projects.

Whatever happenede now ;)

[CalvinZito]

Talked to the R&D manager for MSA and he said they continued to get requests to support it and were (unexpectedly) able to qualify it.  So GREAT news! Glad you noticed because I didn't. 

[cgiesers]

After certifying Version 6.5, they meanwhile also added (up2date) Version 7.0 - as to be seen in SPOCK.

But still need to find out the proper configuration for multipathd. Sadly the documents, as what I got, doesn't give any information about that.

Regards

 - Christof

[codedmind]

Any clue if a SAS msa can be used with xenserver?