Clustering with MSA1000 through IO module

[umedha]

Currently we have two DL380s and one MSA1000 with redundand controllers and two IO modules.
Normally the contoller states are active/standby. So there will be no connectivity from one IO module.
If we are to configure a cluster how are we to proceed? are we to configure both controllers active by upgrading the firmware?

[Stephen Kebbell]

No, you need 2 SAN Switches or Hubs. You can either get the Internal 2/8 SAN Switches for the MSA1000 to replace the I/O modules, or you can get external SAN switches and connect one I/O module to each switch.
Each server also needs a connection to both switches (2 HBAs per Server).

Regards,
Stephen

[Uwe Zessin]

> Normally the contoller states are active/standby.
> So there will be no connectivity from one IO module.

Technically, this is not correct. The standby controller _does_ present the same logical disks like the active controller (provided that SSP is set up correctly).

This is done so that the multipath filter on the host knows that there is a 'standby path'.

However, the standby controller does reject I/O requests instead of forwarding them to the other controller to do the disk I/O like on active/active firmware.