MSA1000 with Marathon Cluster

[Brian Duthie]

We have a Proliant Marathon 6200 Cluster.
DL580 CE's and ML530 IOP's. We wish to put the Database on MSA1000 SAN connect External Storage.

Is this Posible? If so - please advise guidelines on the Setup of the MSA LUNS.

Also will Marathon 6200 support Dual FC Paths ? Do you require SecurePath for the IOP severs to do this?

Regards
Brian

[Doug de Werd]

I would contact Marathon to find out if it is officially supported, but i believe that it will work. You do not run SecurePath in this configuration - you don't need it because you already have dual paths due to the IOPs.

You set up the LUNs on the MSA the same way as if they were standard servers. In other words, just make sure you have double LUNs (one for each IOP). Also, you want to use Selective Storage presentation (SSP) to make sure that none of the connections are shared between the IOPs.

So for example, say you wanted 2 functional LUNS, LUN 1 = 100 GB, and LUN 2 = 200 GB. On the MSA you would make 2 x 100 GB LUNs and 2 x 200 GB LUNs. Set SSP so that one of the 100 GB LUNs had exclusive access only by IOP 1, and the other 100 GB LUN had exclusive access only by IOP 2. Then do the same for LUN 2.

You do not want to have a single LUN that is shared by both IOPs.

You may be able to get some more info here:
http://h71019.www7.hp.com/ActiveAnswers/cache/150470-0-0-225-121.html

or just do a search for "Marathon Technologies" on the main page of the hp.com web site.

Thanks,
Doug

[Serviceguard for Linux]

As I remember, the IOPs in a 6200 need to be connected to independent storage. It may be OK to have the independent storage be separate LUNs but the key thing is that IOP1 is connected to one set of LUNs and IOP2 is connected to another set of LUNs. Obviously the LUN sets for each IOP need to match.

If your using an MSA1000 and a 6200 then you'd HAVE to have dual paths if you want to keep a FT system.

[Doug de Werd]

Since you have 2 IOPs, each connected to storage, you have "dual" paths to the MSA - one from each IOP. If you run SecurePath you would actually have 4 paths instead of 2 (2 from each IOP). Certainly this would provide an additional level of FT, but my concern would be the interaction of SecurePath and the Marathon software. I can't recall if SecurePath is certifed with the MSA1000 and Marathon.

Doug