MSA 1000

[Jorge_122]

Hi I have an MSA1000 with 2 San Switchs, I want to now if is posible to use both switches active - active for full redundancy.
Tanks

[Steven Clementi]

Jorge:

The MSA1000 currently does NOT support Active/Active controllers. Though you may be able to set up your SAN to support active/active fabrics, your Storage controllers will still be Active/Standby until HP can figure out all the issues with going A/A with an MSA.


Steven

[Jorge_122]

Hi Steven, I Understand about controllers, but, I want to know about SAN Switch, I have two switches 2/8 embedded in the MSA 1000 and I want to Use Both Switch for SAN connection, (I want to use 14 switch's port at the same time)
Thanks.

[Steven Clementi · Accepted solution]

Do you mean that you want to connect the 2 switches with an ISL and have 12 ports to use in one fabric?

Or just that you want to attach another device, perhaps 1 device to switch 1 and 1 device to switch 2 and be able to use the devices concurrently?

Either way, yes, you can. BUT, if you put an ISL to connect the switches, you HAVE to set your ZONE Configso that ONLY the "A" HBA can see the "A" controller and the "B" HBA can only see the "B" controller. If you don;t, you will be in unsupported configuration.


Steven

[Jorge_122]

Tanks Steven.

Jorge

[Enzo Vitelli]

Hi,
I have a question about this subject.
Making the zones as Steven suggests (HBA-B that only see the MSA controller B) how can HBA-B connect the disk if the active controller is the MSA controller A?
I am new in this environment, but this is what is happening in my configuration: 2 switch 2/8 with ISL and one server with one HBA on each switch. The server connected to the switch connected to the standby MSA controller, cannot see his disk.
Do I need to configure the switch in some particular way?, or the MSA1000? Or the HBA?

Thanks in advance for the Help

Enzo

[Steven Clementi]

Enzo:

You can not present any disks through the standby controller, only the active controller. The reason you need to configure your zoning in such a mannor is because multiple paths are not supported on the same hba. Each HBA has to have a single path to the MSA. HBA1 to Controler A, HBA2 to Controler B.

HBA B connects to the disk only when the controllers fail over.. ie, controller A becomes standby and controller B active.


Steven

[Enzo Vitelli]

Tanks Steven for your clear reply, at this point my doubt is this: connecting one server with only one HBA, even you have two MSA controllers, there is no way to be protected against a controller fail (only a manual change of the zone, addressing the new active controller). Is this correct?
Thanks in advance for your help

Enzo

[PaulM_1]

I have a similar situation. First, my appologies, as this is my first SAN configuration - My terminology may be incorrect and/or my understanding of components may be limited.

We are isntalling a MSA1000 with the HA Upgrade Kit for a Windows/SQL Server cluster. As a result of the HA Kit, we have redundant controllers, redundant switches, and two HBA's in each server. We also have SecurePath for Windows/Workgroup Edition.

Goal #1: Provide maximum redundancy for cluster storage
Goal #2: Provide maximum throughput without sacrificing redundancy.

The problem is with performance - We are moving from a 320 MB/s SCSI disk system, and are having some performance problems with the 200MB/s FC interface to the MSA1000.

Is it possible to configure the system so that we get the combined throughput of 2 (or more) HBA/FC connections to the MSA for each server. Note that splitting the array across controllers and/or 2 or more LUN's is acceptable, so long as each server can see all available LUN's and we still have redundancy for any single component failure.

Any help is certainly appreciated!

[Steven Clementi]

Paul:

The first thing I suggest is that you create a new thread with your question so that you can track it's progress better, assign points appropiately, close out the thread when you have sufficient advice and/or a solution, etc.

Enzo:

HP does not support addressing the MSA storage from both controllers to 1 HBA. In the case of a manual switch over, you are still presenting the second controller to the same HBA which is still not supported. It may work flawlessly, but HP might Bark about it if you have to call for support.


To answer Paul's question...

No, the MSA1000 supports (that is... HP supports) only one HBA per controller. Since the MSA controllers are only Active/Standby, there is no splitting of LUNS. ALL the luns are on Controller A OR Controller B at any given point in time (assuming the active/active firmware has not yet been released. I have not checked in a while).


Steven