steps on connecting new purchase msa2050 disk enclosure to existing msa2040 controller enclosure

[thomastse]

Dear all,

we purchased a new msa2050 disk enclosure for connecting existing msa2040 controller enclosure. we wish to connect it online without any downtime but I wish to confirm steps written is correct . The following is my draft on it:

1. rack disk enclosure

2. make sure all disks for msa2050 are inserted

3. power on disk enclosure

4. wait until power on cycle for msa2050 is completed ( 10 mins)

5. plug SAS cables to existing msa2040 controller one by one

6. use GUI to confirm all disks in msa2050 are regconized correctly

Please help to comment, thanks in advance.

Thomas

[Fiberfish]

Hi,

I understand you are trying to add one new MSA 2050 enclosure to existing MSA 2040 Controller enclosure and there is not no additional disk enclosure existing at present , only the controller enclosure.

I will suggest , it will be prudent to plan a downt time to add a new disk enclosure.

a) Plan a downtime Windown.

b) Shutdown both the controllers on MSA 2040 using CLI or GUI of the array.

c) Ensure, the new enclosure is Racked below the controller enclosure .

D) While MSA 2050 enclosure is powered off, Connect the SAS cable to the controller enclosure.

e) Ensure, all the disk on the new enclosure is properly seated , Power on the MSA 2050 Enclosure.

f) Wait for all the disk to show Green LED.

g) Now, Controllers to be turned on,  this can be done by removing power cables from controller enclosure and re-inserting it. ( Note : We have turned off both controller earlier ).

h) Now, you after few minutes , you can login in GUI interface and use new disks for creating disk groups.

[thomastse]

Hi FiberFish,

Thanks for your reply. Since it is very difficult to get downtime and I suppose it is easy to add expansion online if procedures are correct.

i found that following document: (for MSA 2050, but I thnik it can be applied on MSA 2040)

https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-a00022337en_us&docLocale=en_US#N1004A

section "Hot-adding disk enclosures sections" > "Extending the straight-through cabling configuration" can be referenced for adding new disk enclosure.

Moreover, is there any firmware compaibility issues needed to consider?

Thomas

[Fiberfish]

Hi Thomas,

a) If you have more than one disk enclosure, then comes the choice of using Straight Cabling or Reverse Cabling.

     Reverse Cabling is suggested way, as it allows communication to continue even in case of an disk enclosure failure.

If you have single Disk enclosure , this choice do not comes up , otherwise, Reverse cabling ( Fault Taulrent cabling ) to be preffered .

b) Since, Controllers need to discover the new disk enclosure and associated disks, therefore, my experiance suggest it is good to be done offline.  Since, it is a small activity , a half an hour downtime , may be in out of office hours should be sufficient.

However,  if you want to add it online , you can still do it  and run command " rescan " from the controller if there is any concern around detection of newly added disks or enclosure.  

c) Firmware compatibility is not a concern with addition of MSA 2050 disk enclosure, they can be upgraded even later .

    As you know , it is always advised to be on latest firmware for controllers or enclosures.

Regards

[Shawn_K]

Hello,

As Fiberfish has mentioned there is no firmware incompatability between the enclosure and the controllers. However, you should be at the latest firmware versions. If you need a good resource for firmware please visit the MSA Firmware site which will have all the controller, enclosure, and hard drive firwmare links: https://h41111.www4.hpe.com/storage/msafirmware.html

Cheers,
Shawn

I work for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The comments in this post are my own and do not represent an official reply from HPE. No warranty or guarantees of any kind are expressed in my reply.

[thomastse]

Thanks for both Fiberfish and Shawn comments. It enhances my confidence on doing this task.

[Luca]

Hi Thomas,

    as I'm about to do the same procedure, add the first MSA2050 SFF enclosure to a MSA 2040 SFF and would like to proceed doing it by hot adding it without downtime, I'd like to know if you did it this same way or you stopped one controller at a time then connecting it or just plugged first one channel then the other as suggested by the hp 2050 guide after the enclosure comes online (which is what I am more inclined to follow as this is the first added enclosure hence no possible interruption of online spanned data).

Thanks!

[Shawn_K]

Hello Luca,

My suggestion is to add the first cable to one of the controllers then plug that cable into the IOM on the disk enclousre. Then plug the second cable into the other controller and then plug that cable into the corresponding IOM on the disk enclsoure. 

I woudl not suggest shutting down a controller to add a cable/IOM. This action takes you to a single point of failure and does not provide any benefit for the addition of the disk enclosure.

Allow the system a few seconds to do the device discovery and then you should be ready to configure your new drives.

Cheers,
Shawn

I work for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The comments in this post are my own and do not represent an official reply from HPE. No warranty or guarantees of any kind are expressed in my reply.

[SUBHAJIT KHANBARMAN_1]

@Luca 

I hope you are referring to "HPE MSA 2050 SAN Storage - Installing the Enclosures",

https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-a00022337en_us&docLocale=en_US

Hope this helps!
Regards
Subhajit

I am an HPE employee

If you feel this was helpful please click the KUDOS! thumb below!

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[Luca]

Hello again all and thanks for getting back to me.

@SUBHAJIT KHANBARMAN_1  I am referring to p.45 of the following best practices pdf:

https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/getdocument.aspx?docname=a00015961enw

This is the documenti I believe @Shawn_K is also referring to for the correct hot add procedure.  Accordingly, I will follow this procedure to hot add the MSA2050 enclosure to the 2040.

Thanks!

[Koovz]

Hi all. 

hope you are well....

Need so info or assistance please. 

I have also tried to hot plug MSA2050 Expansion enclousre to MSA2040. 

I have started up the MSA2050 then connected the cables to the MSA2040. It did an auto scan and it shows the expansion enclosure on the management of the MSA2040. 

The problem that I am having is that I have SASHDD and also SSD's in the new enclosure. I can see both set of drives. However when I try to create a disk group, I cannot select the SSD's. I can only create disk group for the SAS disks. 

I have also done a rescan and also rebooted controllers one by one. Still same thing. 

Any idea or options? Or would I need to shut down the MSA2040 for it to pick up. 

Other thing as well, I know on the MSA2050 you need a performance Tier license do configure both SAS and SSD. Would this be related to license issue as well? 

[SahanaR]

Hi,

MSA 2050 LFF enclosure is supported as a expansion enclosure to MSA 2040.

HPE MSA 2050 LFF Disk Enclosure Q1J06A

NOTE:
• The MSA 2050 LFF and SFF Disk Enclosures are the recommended disk enclosures for capacity
expansion on the MSA 2040 storage systems.
• The use of MSA 2050 LFF and SFF Disk Enclosures with MSA 1040/2040/2042 storage requires
requires GL225 array controller firmware, or newer.

This 2U enclosure is designed to support twelve HPE Storage LFF
drives and accepts MSA dual-ported 12Gb SSD and SAS Midline hard drives.

I believe you have purchased the right set of SSD and SAS drives.

Also please confirm what is the firmware version on MSA 2040 controllers.

Also you must have Tiering license installed to create create DG of different disk types in pool.You can check by running #show license

for more info on license check page 21 https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/getdocument.aspx?docname=c04123144

For more information read page 12 https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/getdocument.aspx?docname=c04123144

Thanks

Sahana R

[SahanaR]

Hi,

Also I would like to check what type of DG you are planning to create with SSD?Virtual or linear?

Because MSA 2040 supports both linear and virtual storage.

You can still use SSD drives to create linear Dg without license,but in the web gui the default option selected is virtual.

Conslusion woulde be if you cant to create virtual dg with ssd you need the tiering license i mentioned.

For linear dg with ssd ,while creating you need to make sure you select the type as Linear.

Thanks

[Koovz]

Hi Sahana R.

Thank you for all the information and assistance.

I am trying to create a Virtual disk group with the SSD's. I have as a test created a Linear Disk group and that works. But with Linear disk group it looses alot of functionalty so need to create virtual disk group.  So it looks like it could be tiering license issue. 

Other thing I notices is when I create a Virtual disk group from the SAS disks in the expansion enclosure, it does not create disk type as "SAS(standard). It creates it as "SAS MDL(archive). Is this also related to tier license?

[SahanaR]

Hi,

You are welcome!

HPE MSA supports three tiers of storage,each tier relates to a specific drive class.

Performance tier-SSD 
Standard tier-15K and 10K Enterprise SAS hard disk drives (HDDs) 
Archive tier-7.2K MDL SAS HDDs 

It depends on the drive type you select to create Dg.

To understand more about virtual storage architecture,please read https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/getdocument.aspx?docname=a00087404enw

Thanks 

Sahana R