msa1000 performance, iscsi, etc.

[Erik Briggs]

Hi, currently we have 2 MSA 1000's both with dual controllers, firmware 4.48, set in Active/Passive. We are running connected via iscsi by way of a Cisco 5428-2 storage router. I have done quite a bit of research and know a number of steps I want to take to improve things, but there are a number of things that I can't find good information on. Hopefully someone can help point me in the right direction. Here goes:

1) We are getting new blade servers (HP ProLiant BL680c's in a c7000 chassis) and I would like to be able to boot the production blade via iscsi. I know the blade supports it, I know windows iscsi initiator supports it, but I don't know whether the MSA supports it (via iscsi). Does anyone know whether booting off the MSA1000 via iscsi is possible either with current firmware (4.48), or the newer one(s) 5.20 or 7.00?

2) Is MPIO possible via iscsi? I know that I can upgrade to 7.00 firmware to achieve Active/Active status on the controllers, but all the MPIO information I find pertains to FC. I can't find anything about MPIO via iscsi. Does anyone know whether it is possible, and if so, what I might need to do it? I can see that FC might be a better setup, but we aren't yet ready to go FC

I inherited this system and am trying to milk the most out of it that I can. Currently, there are only 2 servers that will be accessing the LUN's on both of these MSA's. I don't foresee any of that changing any time soon. I know MPIO could open up some load balancing and more throughput, if it was implemented correctly, so I am trying to make sure I have everything lined up. I also found that one of my MSA's only has 256mb cache, so I am also planning on upgrading that to increase performance.

If anyone has any other recommendations, I would love to hear them. Unfortunately, we don't have any budget to make any serious changes (FC or otherwise) any time soon.

Thanks.

[IBaltay]

>1) We are getting new blade servers
boot from iscsi - msa1000 is fibre channel only, (msa 1500i and msa 2000i are iscsi models)
these firmwares are the disk controller related (nothing with iscsi)
firmwares 4.48 - 5.20 are active/passive
firmwares 7.00 - is active/active
>2) the msa 1500i documentation is here:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DocumentIndex.jsp?contentType=SupportManual〈=en&cc=us&docIndexId=64179&taskId=101&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=3365335
you can review e.g. the conceipt and deployment guide

[Bill Costigan]

I believe you'll need an iSCSI HBA if you want to do boot from SAN. Any software built into MS will not do you any good until the MS software starts to run. (Long after the initial boot sequence)

The Hardware Based iSCSI HBA can present the iSCSI LUN to the boot process so that the bootstrap and other data needed to start the server can be read from the MSA.

[Erik Briggs]

Well, I have done some more research. Yes, the MSA is FC, but the 5428 is an iSCSI router that provides iSCSI access to FC-based SANs. It is a very old device, and no longer has much in the way of documentation, especially for my specific case. I am going to proceed this weekend and upgrade to an Active/Active firmware, since I believe the 5428 can handle it. As far as MPIO goes, I don't think its possible, and I am sure it is unsupported, even if it could handle it.

What I decided to do is to setup some of our SAN connections on their own virtual router (on the 5428) which will allow me to specify the second GbE port. Currently, even though the SAN is using 2GB FC to the router, the router itself only provides 2 GbE ports for connectivity to iSCSI endpoints. This makes for a massive bottleneck as far as connectivity goes, and doesn't make much sense to anyone who knows anything about SAN's. I couldn't even begin to speculate as to what Cisco was thinking when they designed this device. Unfortunately, my hands are completely tied, as my boss tells me we have no budget for changes/upgrades.

I could try getting more NIC's for my servers to increase their throughput, but it wouldn't make much of a difference because the 5428 can only serve iSCSI through its 2 x GbE ports. It makes me sick, but I think its the best I can do. For our DB server, I may try using 2 Gb NIC's instead of 1, and moving some of the LUN's so some use one NIC and the others use the second.

The only plus side to this setup is that there are only 2 servers connecting via iSCSI, one of which is just a file server. The DB server is the only one putting much traffic onto the SAN. I will eventually try to move these files off to a DL185 because we are not setup to utilize any of the benefits of the SAN (redundancy), so it is just taking up space I could be using for my DB server.

[Bill Costigan]

One small note on MPIO and iSCSI. I was looking through the MPIO documents for the MSA2000 and it mentions that HP's MPIO only has to be installed for FC connections and that the Microsoft iSCSI initiator already has MPIO built-in.

Based on that I'd say if you are using the MS iSCSI to connect to the iSCSI router, you should be all set with MPIO. If I remember correctly, the last this I installed and configured the MS iSCSI there was a check box to enable MPIO.