Quorum corruption on installing third HBA in MSA1000

[Sheamus Nulty]

We have a two node cluster with dual HBAs connected to an MSA1000. We are running Secure Path 4.0c. We recently installed a third HBA in both nodes. When the nodes came backup after the install for some strange reason the Quorum became corrupt on the SAN. The third HBAs weren't attached to anything and were to be used later on. We removed the HBAs and restored the Quorum and everything was OK again.

Has anybody experienced this problem before as we have to try and install the HBAs again.

Thanks

Sheamus

[Doug de Werd]

What are you going to use the 3rd HBA for? I'm not surprised that it didn't work. Can't you just connect whatever you plan to using the existing HBAs?

Thanks,
Doug

[Maxim Rudnev]

Secure Path & MSA1000 work properly whith 2 path only. If Secure Path see more that 2 ways to MSA 1000, Secure Path will work with some truoble.

[Sheamus Nulty]

Doug / Maxim,

The third HBA is being used to connect to another EMC SAN Switch. Secure Path will only be enabled on the two original HBAs.

We have been told that some customers have 6 HBAs installed in their nodes but the discerning factor was that Secure Path wasn't installed.

We have the latest version of Secure Path installed 4.0c. Is their any way to ensure Secure Paths isn't going to try and pick-up the newly installed HBA.

Thanks

Sheamus

[Doug de Werd]

Do you have your switches properly zoned? If there is any way that the 3rd HBA is seeing the MSA1000, then you will most definitely have problems.

According to the HP SAN Design Reference Guide, it sounds like you may need to add a 4th HBA. SecurePath is probably getting confused with on dual path and one single path. You should be able to do 2 dual paths though.

Check out this link, look on p. 4 (page 94 of the whole doc)
http://h200006.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00093950/c00093950.pdf

The entire SAN Design Refernce Guide can be found at:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DocumentIndex.jsp?contentType=SupportManual&locale=en_US&docIndexId=179911&taskId=101&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=406734

Thanks,
Doug

[Sheamus Nulty]

Doug,

The swtiches have been zoned but we didn't even get a chance to connect the third HBAs up before the Quorum got corrupted. The installation of the third HBAs must had some affect on the HBAs currently in the node to have caused this. Unfortunately, no information was logged so we are a bit in the dark.

I'll check out the docs you listed. I don't want Secure Path configure on the Third HBAs so there must be some way to tell it to ignore certain HBAs and eliminate the issue of creating new paths.

Thanks

Sheamus

[Doug de Werd · Accepted solution]

I am not certain, but I don't think you can have a combination of sinlge path and dual path HBAs in the same server. I don't *think* SecurePath will let you specify which HBAs are for dual path and which are for single path. Plus, there appears to be a limit on connecting a server simultaneously to an MSA1000 and another type of storage (regardless of single or dual path)

Not sure if this helps (probably not...) but in a different chapter of the SAN Design Guide it states that dual heterogeneous SAN Fabrics are not supported with MSA1000 (p. 12 at http://h200005.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00093939/c00093939.pdf. However, that may be regarding the differences in the SAN fabrics themselves, which it sounds like you are using the same SAN fabric (switches, etc.) for the EMC box and the MSA1000, just zoned out.

Also found this on p. 45 of the same doc (different chapter)http://h200005.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00093950/c00093950.pdf

"Servers accessing MSA1000 storage systems must not have access to
EVA5000/EVA3000, HP XP or VA, EMA/ESA12000, EMA16000, MA/RA8000,
MA6000, RA4100 or RA4000 storage systems. Zoning is required to prevent access from
servers to multiple storage system types when configuring these storage systems in the
same physical SAN."

Even though EMC is not listed there, it sounds like it may not be supported - IOW if you connect to an MSA1000, you can't connect to any other type of disk storage (regardless of single or dual path). I'm not sure if that's the correct interpretation though, but it kind of sounds like what you're trying to do is not supported.


Thanks,
Doug