MSA P2000 & Proliant DL380 - iSCSI can't connect / ping

[M_S]

System is an Proliant DL380G7
Storage is a MSA P2000 G3 iSCSI MSA Dual Controller
OS is CentOS 6.0 64bit

The MSA is connected via CrossLink Cat6 cable, Controller A to NIC3 (eth2), Controller B to NIC4 (eth3)

ip Config on Server is :
eth2 = 10.0.0.12/24 gw=10.0.0.1
eth3 = 10.0.0.13/24 gw=10.0.0.1

CLI Connection is /dev/ttyACM0
Output from "show network-parameters" looks like this :

Network Parameters Controller A
-------------------------------
IP Address: 10.0.0.2
Gateway: 10.0.0.1
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
MAC Address: 00:C0:FF:12:5F:08
Addressing Mode: Manual

Network Parameters Controller B
-------------------------------
IP Address: 10.0.0.3
Gateway: 10.0.0.1
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
MAC Address: 00:C0:FF:12:5E:56
Addressing Mode: Manual

Strange thing is, i can't ping or connect to the MSA with these ip's BUT i can ping 10.0.0.97 which is the iSCSI Port B.

So, what am i doing wrong here ? I just don't get it ... :(

[Johan Guldmyr]

Hi, you need to connect the server to the dedicated ethernet port to be able to access the management interface via IP.

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13551_div/13551_div.html

has a picture.

The port located physically in the middle on the back of each controller is the management ethernet port.

[M_S]

Hi Johan,

thx for the reply, now things look better :)

But, since this is my first iscsi setup, i've still lots of questions.

Is there any good guide that explains how to setup such a system ?

For example, i wonder if the controller ports are now just redundant ?

I can connect to controller a right now, but not to b.

Also, i now have 2x4 "free" iscsi ports, do i have to connect all 8 ports to our lan switch ?

Do i have to give them ips from our lan or are "private" ips better ?

See, i'm an iscsi newbie and open for any help or hints ;)

M.

[Johan Guldmyr]

There should be a guide, maybe a best practice document?
You should have a dedicated lan for the iscsi. Logically at a minimum. Preferably physical too. The more connections the more redundancy and performance.

[Johan Guldmyr]

Is that a 10GbE or 1GbE iSCSI you have?

Manuals: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DocumentIndex.jsp?contentType=SupportManual&lang=en&cc=us&docIndexId=64179&taskId=101&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=4118559

"HP P2000 G3 iSCSI MSA System User Guide"

http://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/doctype.aspx?doctype=white+paper|analyst+report&cc=us&lc=en

For best practices.

There is one called " HP P2000 G3 MSA Best practices - Technical white paper (US English)"

By the way, there were some documents about the FC/iSCSI controller but the iSCSI there is AFAIK only for replication.

HP has a guide called 'SAN Design Reference Guide'. Chapter 18 is about iSCSI.

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

It looked like it didn't have so much about P2000 iSCSI specifically but there should be some good conceptual stuff in there.

[Johan Guldmyr]

Also I believe the idea behind separating the normal LAN traffic and the iSCSI SAN traffic is that iSCSI traffic is a bit more sensitive than your average traffic. Re-transmission of packets on http-traffic is probably not so bad, but if it's SCSI commands for disks then the server could have problems etc.

[M_S]

>Is that a 10GbE or 1GbE iSCSI you have?

We have the 1GbE version

Right now an additional physical LAN is no option, so my idea was to direct connect the Storage via Crosslink Cat6 to the Server.

But after reading some of the documents you mentioned, i think a vlan might be more appropiate.

Anyway, thanks again for the input :)

[Johan Guldmyr]

No probs :)

What are you going to run on it?

[M_S]

>What are you going to run on it?

smb,nfs,ftp and at some later point probably a small sql db.

[Johan Guldmyr]

Allright, the only one there you may have to worry about latency is the sql one so should be good for now then I suppose :)