MSA1500 Active/Active Successful

[Muhammad Imran]

Hi.I have recently updated my MSA1500 Box to Active/Active. I just want to know from the professionals of this form that I did everything successfully or still I need some configurations in MSA1500 to boost up the performance.
Please have a look at show tech_support of both controllers in attached files.
Let me know what should I do more to get excellent performance from this Active/Active MSA1500?

[Muhammad Imran]

Look below ACU output.
RAID 6 (ADG) status Enabled
Host Controller PCI Based Fibre Channel Adapter
Host Controller Location Slot 2
Host Controller Adapter ID 210000E08B8E2BFD
Arbitrated Loop Physical Address (HOST) Domain : 1, Area : 1, Port : 0
Chassis Name SGA0624044
Chassis Serial Number SGA0624044
Firmware Version 6.86
Rebuild Priority Low
Expand Priority Low
Current Surface Scan Delay 3 sec
Number of Arrays 3
Number of Logical Drives 4
Number of Physical Drives 8
Physical Drives Attached to Port 2 Box 2 : Bay 1, 72.8 GB (Parallel SCSI)
Box 2 : Bay 2, 72.8 GB (Parallel SCSI)
Box 2 : Bay 3, 72.8 GB (Parallel SCSI)
Box 2 : Bay 4, 72.8 GB (Parallel SCSI)

Physical Drives Attached to Port 4 Box 2 : Bay 11, 72.8 GB (Parallel SCSI)
Box 2 : Bay 12, 72.8 GB (Parallel SCSI)
Box 2 : Bay 13, 72.8 GB (Parallel SCSI)
Box 2 : Bay 14, 72.8 GB (Parallel SCSI)

All Physical Drives Assigned Yes

Redundancy Settings
Redundant Path OK
Redundancy Status OK
Redundancy Mode Active-Active
Controller 1 Serial Number PB9840NX3TA06H
Controller 2 Serial Number P56350HX3SZ01T
Preferred Path Mode Automatic

Controller 1 Preferred Path
Logical Drive 1
Logical Drive 2
Logical Drive 3
Logical Drive 4

Controller 2 Preferred Path None

Array Accelerator
Present Yes
Cache Status Enabled
Accelerator Ratio 70% Read /30% Write
Read Cache Size 180 MB
Write Cache Size 76 MB
Battery Pack Count 1
Battery Status OK

You can see all the logical drives path is under controller1. Controller 2 is not doing anything however it is A/A setup.
Why is like this?
Please guide me to improve this setup.

[John Kufrovich]

A/A is loaded.

With windows and MSA, you have two preferred paths.

1). HBA port to MSA controller.

2). MSA controller to MSA LUN.

You will need to check your MPIO settings and the load balancing scheme. With ACU or MSA cli, you can manually assign controller/lun ownership.

With a little more information on the type of applications running I may be able to make some recommendations. SQL, Exchange, blackberry server?

[Muhammad Imran]

Thanks for your reply.
I am using windows 2003 EE R2 and MS SQL2000 as a clustering application.
Logical Disk 1 contains Quroum
Logical Disk 2 contains MSDTC
Logical Disk 3 contains Databse Binary files
Logical Disk 4 contains SQL T-log

So What is your recommendation for load balance+redundancy as well for this setup and how can I do it?
I appreciate your recommendations.

[Muhammad Imran]

Any suggestions for the above mentioned setup?

[John Kufrovich]

So far everything looks good.

With ACU you can manual assign LUNs to particular controllers.

With FF MPIO, you can allow HBA load balancing or set a preferred path. If you set a preferred path, make sure you align the HBA->MSA controller ->LUN.

e.g. HBA port 0 -> MSA controller 0 -> MSA controller 0 LUNs.

Set you controller to at least 50/50.

[Muhammad Imran]

Thanks for your reply.Can you please guide me with FF MPIO that how can I make load balance on HBAs. I have tried it from HP MPIO DSM Manager, when I right click there are 4, 5 options like Set Load Balance RR, Set Load balance SQB like. What are all these? However when I try to click on anyone it gives me error like you can't do this on a clusterd disk. For detailed error message you can see the attached picture.
Waiting ro another kind solution.

[John Kufrovich]

Never seen this msg. before. I'll have to make a few calls to get an answer on the popup.

Select an individual LUN, in the right screen you will seen the MSA controllers id, if you right click on either controller, you can set the preferred path.

[Muhammad Imran]

"Select an individual LUN, in the right screen you will seen the MSA controllers id, if you right click on either controller, you can set the preferred path."


I did it but the same error message.
You can see in the attached file.

[John Kufrovich · Accepted solution]

In the right pane, can you double click the LUN. You should see two MSA controllers associated with that LUN.