MSA1000 Active/Active Controllers

[matthew robey]

Currently the MSA1000 controllers are in active/passive mode, although VMS supports active/active. Does anyone know if there is (or will be) a firmware upgrade to the controllers to allow this. Seems a waste of controller to me.

Thanks,

Matt

[Derek_31]

According to HP, Active/Active on the MSA-1000 won't be until at least the middle of next year. Rumor is that the MSA development team has gotten quite small and so their schedule has really fallen behind.

I think they were planning on having active/active last year....and now it will be 2005 at the soonest.

[Mads Storm Andersen]

The latest rumor I have heard coming from an usually reliable source, is that it will not happen. There is a HW limitation in the MSAâ s that they have not been able to "crack

[Leslie Martin]

Just got back from HP at Houston where they
previewed a MSA1500 running Active/Active Controllers. Apparently it's just a Firmware upgrade that's required and it "should" be available on MSA1000 early 2005.

[Douglas_22]

Has anyone heard if/when the MSA 1000 will support active/active mode?

[Doug de Werd]

last I heard was May or June 2005

[Gianni_12]

Excuse, sorry for my ignorance, but what are the benefits of having a active/active controllers?

Gianni

[Uwe Zessin]

You can use the I/O capacity (CPU, Cache, Host port) of the second controller.

A host's failover does not force the failover of *all* other LUNs from *all* other hosts.

[Douglas_22]

Gianni I am used to working with a different architecture at the controller, in a setup like the following:

Fiber Channel attached disk sleds with two connections each
One to controller A, one to controller B

And the controllers I've worked with have had *two* connections each, on Controller A, connection A.1 to switch fabric 1, and on same controller,connection A.2 to switch fabric B.
And on controller B, connection B.1 to fabric B, and connection B.2 to fabric A.

And so you would have multiple paths from the fabric to the storage devices.

It seems for now the MSA1000 supports Connections A.1 and B.1, and *only* one can be active at a time until the firmware is improved.

I'm trying to set my customer's expectations in the event that a server connected to both Fabric A and B loses one of its connections. With only one active path from the fabric to storage, it would seem there are a few Usage Cases (e.g. server HBA or fiber fails) that we need to know how to handle.

Thus the original poster's comment, "Seems a waste of controller to me." It kind of is if you're used to a more feature-filled (read more connections) storage processor. Not that it's a bad product - it isn't, you do get high performance, Some redundancy, higher availability, but just not the "highest" availability solution. And the price is about right, given those product features.