Need MSA1000 Education quick!!!

[ANDREY FYODOROV]

I am not new to MSA1000. I have been using them for a number of years and I have a bunch of Exchange 2003 clusters in my environment with MSA1000.

We currently use MSA1000 with two 2/8 switches in active/standby mode.

Each Windows 2003 cluster node has two HBAs connected to different switches.

Each Windows 2003 cluster node runs SecurePath for Windows Workgroup Edition.

We are getting ready to build new Exchange 2007 clusters and have purchased new MSA1000 for that. Before we deploy them we would like to upgrade these MSA1000 with the latest firmware.

Now when I go to download MSA1000 firmware, I see two versions, only a few days apart:

- MSA1000 Active/Active Firmware v7.00 A/A Firmware 19 Feb 2007

- MSA1000 Active/Passive firmware 5.20 A/P 14 Feb 2007

Do I need to consider using 5.20 at all? Or should I go with Avtive/Active 7.0?

If I go with Active/Active 7.0, do I no longer need SecurePath (or any other MPIO software?)

Thanks in advance for clarification!

[ANDREY FYODOROV]

Also why are there two different MSA1000 Support software CDs available for download? Both dated Dec 12 2006.

[ANDREY FYODOROV]

Also going forward there is a plan to connect other Windows 2003 servers to the same MSA1000 (each server with dual HBAs).

Do we need to do anything special or just use Selective Storate Presentation?

I have been reading HP Storage Works SAN Design Reference Guide and there is talk about LUNs, Fabrics and Zones.....

I only know how to create Arrays and Logical Volumes on MSA1000.

Do I need to get into the LUNs, Fabrics, and Zones??? And if so, how do I actually do it? The PDF doesn't show how.

[James Muell]

1st The last MS cluster certified firmware for the MSA1000 is 4.48. Neither 5.20 or 7.00 is certified yet to work with MS clusters.

-- The MSA1500 supports fw 5.10 which is MS certified.

You should be using SSP (which is a kind of lun masking) to assign the luns to the respective cluster hosts. Its a little to hard to instruct you how to use switch zoning. SSP is a simplified way of zoning.

The next firmware upgrades (5.10, 5.20, 7.00) also means you can use the free multipath software HP-MPIO but you will need the versions that go with the firmware code.