MSA2012 G1 - paths

[Joshua Small_2]

Hi,

Some time back, I experienced what appears to be a loss of paths on an MSA2012fc. You can read all about it here:

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Storage-Area-Networks-SAN-Small/MSA2012fc-paths-to-VMware-following-firmware/td-p/5378823

Advice from L1, L2 and L3 at HP have been "have you tried upgrading your firmware?".

Now I'm looking at this from a new angle, and based on what I'm reading here:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&objectID=c01693126

I'm wondering whether we're looking at it wrong. To clarify, in a dual controller, dual FC switch environment, is it correct that an MSA2012G1 should see two paths to each LUN - one from each HBA (as ours does currently)? I'm aware the G3 uses ULP and will always see four.

As per my long running frustration, the difficulty is that, pre-firmware upgrade, we saw four paths. From what I'm reading, this will be what you'd should expect if "host port interconnect" was turned on, although I see the recommendation is "disabled" for our environment.

I've been referring to this document extensively in coming to this conclusion:

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2010/JustRightITopk/MSA2000_G1_White_Paper.pdf

The idea going through my head is that we had this setting "on" and somehow the upgrade turned it off? If anyone can confirm or deny this, it will give us something great to go on towards understanding what we're looking at.

From there, my next question is going to be, "if we wanted to test this theory, is enabling host port interconnect something we can do without causing a disruption, in our environment?"

[John Kufrovich]

If you enable Host interconnect, your host will most likely lose connection to the array.  The arrays FC ports LEDs will toggle as the array tries to log into the switch.