Unable to find secondary path

We have a failover cluster. Both nodes running Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition with SP2. Both nodes have three HBA's (all Emulex LP982) and two of these are used for SAN disks.

The problem we have is that we cant find the secondary path on the passive node. The card is there and nothing seems wrong, it reports stats up and link status OK in HBAnyware. It is in Automapping but doesnt find the disks. I tried to add the Target WWPN manually but this didnt show any difference.

Autopath also only lists one card, instead of two as it should.

We have autopath, securepath, hbanyware and lputilnt installed.

I believe this issue is very easy to solve if you have the knowledge, but unfortunatly my SAN knowledge is very limited.

17 REPLIES 17

Hi,
there are couple of questions which have to be clear to avoid the fallacies:

1. What storage/firmware active/active or active passive are you using?
2. Is the zoning checked and correct? -
Is the second HBA port wwns mapped with the storage fc front ports in the SAN zones?

the pain is one part of the reality

91A1 Active/Active.

Zoning is checked and is correct according to the SAN technician.

All ports are verified and the fabrics are logged in with the correct WWN.

and what is the storage type pls? (e.g. msa,eva,xp?)

the pain is one part of the reality

Sorry missed that one, its XP

and can you check:
a) if the appropriate XP host group has the appropriate HBA port wwns mapping?
b) if the host group has assigned the relevant XP disks/LDEVs?

the pain is one part of the reality

Two host groups NAS with one WWN from each node.

All LDEVs are presented to these hosts.

yes but there is the MSCS cluster which is shared nothing cluster, that means that only one cluster node - the owner is accessing the disk resources, the other one is only waiting for the failover...right?

the pain is one part of the reality

Thats correct. And both nodes should have a redundant path as well, right now only the active node have two paths while the passive node only have one.

and is the second HBA wwn nicely visible in the SAN fabric? (if it does not work, you can portdisable/portenable its port and then check its visibility again)

the pain is one part of the reality

Yes it is, we have tried disable/enable the port.

can you check also the MPIO DSM FF to be sure that all the paths are not rerouted solely to the first HBA pls? (what version of MPIO are you running pls)

the pain is one part of the reality

On these two we have Securepath and not MPIO.

and what exact version of the XP do you have pls? Because one possible reason is that e.g. XP10k/12k/24k are active/active (AA) storages to which you need MPIO DSM FF (the Secure Path solution is only for the active/passive (AP) disk arrays in Windows) and only HP-UX Secure path solution is both for AA&AP disk storages...

the pain is one part of the reality

It's XP12k. We have planned to change from securepath to MPIO and to change to XP24k as well. But due to the importance of these servers it is very difficult for us to get some downtime.

SecurePath 4.0c, SP1, SP2-1, SP3 are supported:

SP3 download:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=18964&prodSeriesId=315586&swItem=co-54890-1&prodNameId=1825351&swEnvOID=1005&swLang=8&taskId=135&mode=4&idx=0

MPIO FF DSM 3.00.00 and 3.01.00 are supported:

Secure Path to MPIO migration:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=18964&prodSeriesId=315586&prodNameId=1825351&swEnvOID=1005&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=co-60439-1

MPIO FF DSM 3.01.0O download:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=18964&prodSeriesId=421492&prodNameId=421493&swEnvOID=1005&swLang=13&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=co-64846-1

the pain is one part of the reality

Our problem got solved when we switched to MPIO.

Solution: Switched from securepath to MPIO.