HP MPIO Full featured DSM for EVA v2.00.01

[SV CENTRALI]

hi,I've a Blade BL460c G1 with a S.O. windows server 2003 Enterprise Edition SP2 and a QLogic Fibre Channel,connected with an EVA8000 SAN, managed by HP MPIO Full Featured DSM v2.00.01.
This is a stand alone server, I configure the "load balance policy" to SQST (Shortest Queue Service Time), is it a correct way? I think yes, but for the last 2 months HP Data protector Fail every time when it tries to backup that partition in the SAN,is impossible also to browse some folder,I tried to right mouse in a folder and explorer went down! and restart itself.There are only 90 GB of data in that partition,what is the problem for you? too many files under the directory? What's windows limit about this number? I'm in a big trouble! please help me. Thanks a lot for your help. Luca

[Rune J. Winje]

Hi,
well, you should NOT update to MPIO FF DSM for EVA v 3.01 that includes MPIO.SYS v1.21
Ref MS KB article http://support.microsoft.com/?id=961640

MPIO.SYS 1.22 will be bundled with MPIO FF DSM for EVA v 3.02 which hopefully will be published this month.

Otherwise a couple of important storage related fixes post-SP2:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950903 STORPORT.SYS hotfix
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959608 NTFS.SYS hotfix
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943669 VolSnap/VSS components and FTDisk Drivers.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940307 Mountmgr hotfix

Regarding number of files the theoretical maximum of files is beyond what is practical really:
http://ask-leo.com/is_there_a_limit_to_what_a_single_folder_or_directory_can_hold.html

The practical issues will be for applications that need to index/inventory all files - and for example impact the time a backup program uses to index files before the backup starts. Are we talking millions and millions of files here?

Performance-wise you can also disable 8.3 short names and last access times:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555041

Also - chkdsk /f
When was it last run? If never run then index errors/corruptions in NTFS could increase over time...


Cheers,
Rune

[SV CENTRALI]

Thank you Rune,
the number of files in that partition are uncountable for windows,I managed to list only a directory by DOS prompt and it run for hour!
I don't know if the problem is windows or Hp Data Protector, but now I'm quite sure that the problem is the number of that files and folder.
cheers
Luca

[Timothy Cusson]

The current version of HP MPIO FF DSM is 3.02.00, you should update this.

The MPIO manager is now version 4.0.

Also, the fibre channel driver should be updated. It could be a Q-logic (9.1.7.17) or an Emulex. To install a StorPort driver you must install the Microsoft Hot Fix first.

For trouble shooting, set the load balancing to none.

TC