Windows Cluster on msa1500cs and multipathing

[Favad Ahmed 2]

We have a problem with multipathing on our SAN. We have the following:

2 HP DL308 G4 with 2 HP Emulex HBAs (A7388A - LP1050) and a dual gigabit ethernet nic running windows 2003 SP1 enterprise in a cluster. (we have not as yet put exchange 2003 on this - just clustering
2 Storageworks 2/24 switches (Mcdata)
MSA1500cs
2 x MSA30
MSA20
HP DL360 with 2 HBAs but no LUNS presented as yet
all are running the latest firmware and drivers except the MSA1500cs & MSA20 which are on 4.98

We are using the basic mpio v1.1 and when we have the redundant paths are up the passive node takes about 40 mins to boot. In addition when one of the nodes boots the msa1500cs fails over to the redundant controller (MSA1000)
when we turn off redundant paths by either takiong the appropriate cables out or removing the redundant controller we dont have these issues.
Any ideas where my issues might be?

[CA1074530]

Interesting. I have a similar problem with an MSA1500cs with MSA20's.
I had a HP Engineer on-site to look at this issue. We did all sorts of path testing and playing with cables. We found a configuration that did not fail-over, and it was not as expected. (as you have no doubt discovered.)
The engineer basically admitted that he had no idea and suggested I leave it as it was or lived with the controller failover.
My machine was also connecting to LUN's on an EVA5000 and we were using SecurePath.
The controllers would only fail when the server O/S booted and the drivers loaded. I find it interesting that you have this with MPIO whilst I have the same with SecurePath. Perhaps Windows is forcing the failover?

[Johan Holmstrom]

Do you have any luns presented to your cluster yet? Make sure that the current firmware on the shelf are:
MSA20: FW 1.42
MSA30 (Ultra320): FW CP20

[Favad Ahmed 2]

We managed to resolve this by rebulding one of the nodes in the cluster. We were seeing the problem on both nodes but we did the following:
moved the HBAs on node 2 into slots 1 and 2 (just like node 1) and rebuilt the node from scratch. Coiuld not replicate the problem

[EdwardD]

Hi,
I'm not sure, but as I know, there could be some problems with A7388A storport driver on Windows, therefore the following article could be helpful: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/908980/en-us. So, update HBA firmware and update driver to latest version from HP web and apply MS patch from article.
Regards,

Edward