Shared storage for HP and Sun

[Ninad_1]

Hi,

Can anyone guide me on the following questions.
1)Is there any shared storage which can be used for HP as well as Sun servers simultaneously ? If yes which models/ where can I get this info.
2) Is there any restriction when using SAN or shared storage that all the servers using must be of HP or any other restriction as such ?
3) Can a XP256 presently being used by a N class be connected to Sun E450 and E420R ? -anyone who has used heterogeneous systems.
4) Any restrictions for using XP256 with more than one HP server? Where can I get more info on XP256 ?

Regs,
Nad

[Richard Perez]

1) EVA3000 or 5000
2) no restrictions I am aware of.

[Paul Henderson_2]

Nad,

I have HP, Compaq, SUN, Dell, and SGI servers all using disks on an EVA5000. The servers run VMS, Solaris, Linux, Windoz, and SGI ProPack.

That's what a SAN is all about!

Paul

[Peter Mattei]

Yes of course you can!
The XP systems are built to run multiple OSes and servers simultaniously.
On older XPs like the XP256 you need a dedicated FC port per OS.
On newer XPs you can even share FC ports between OSes.

Cheers
Peter

[SAKET_5]

Hi Nad,

yes all the previous response give you the hint - a SAN is about shared storage service across heterogenous OS platforms...

however, speaking specifically on Sun platform, here is something that I would like to put forward based on our experience...our SAN consists of a number of HSG80s & EVA 5000s with Tru64 Unix, Sun Solaris, RedHat Linux and MS Windows hosts accessing SAN storage. No problems at all with sharing storage across a multitude of various different OSs.

However, on a Sun Fire E6900 when we tried to use Sun supplied HBAs (Sun "badged" Qlogic FCAs) with HP's Secure Path and EVA 5000 as the storage arrays - things didn't work....we had Sun support and HP onsite...as soon as we replaced the Sun supplied FCAs with HP supplied ones - everything worked like a treat.

So my point being certain things - you would need to consider...although all the FCAs in our case were Qlogic FCAs, the Sun supplied ones were running a Sun supplied Firmware - which obviously didnt play the game with HP's Secure Path and EVA 5000...the HP supplied ones were running HP supplied firmware on it and everything worked...

If you search the forum, you would find atleast another similar incident (as I provided my inputs on that post as well).

Hope it helps,

Regards,
Saket.

[Ninad_1]

Thanks everyone for your replies.

Regs,
Nad

[Paul Henderson_2]

Saket is correct. We had a SUN V240 server shipped with a SUN HBA, and it did not work with the EVA. I even tried to flash the firmware to the HP version, but it wouldn't take.

So we had to buy the HBA from HP directly, and now everything is working normally.

So SUN servers + HP HBAs work fine. SUN servers + SUN HBAs do not work.