Missing Fibre Disks on reboot

[Andrew Moody_1]

When I reboot any of our UX machines, particularly the 2470, it always comes back without at least one of it's fibre connected disks.

I've just had to restart the 2470 6 times to get it to see all the paths to it's current allocation of disks.

Any idea's on where I start to debug this issue as I'm going ever more grey by the day.

Andrew

[Torsten.]

Hi Andrew,

first thing I would do is to check the PDC level of your server.
Should be 43.50 (patch is named PF_CHAW4350)

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Andrew,

I have a particular L-class (rp54xx) system that whenever we apply patches that upon reboot does not see it's FC disk paths.
We're not sure why, but we know the problem is the A5158 HBAs are not logging in to the SAN switches successfully.
We mitigate this by pulling the fibres from the HBAs for at least 30 seconds & rebooting. So you might try that & I'd also recommend submitting a case to the RC to find root cause.
I'm still not convinced this is an HP problem as this is the *only* one of hundreds of systems that does this so I would also engage your storage group to look at the switch as well.

Rgds,
Jeff

[melvyn burnard]

This looks like your SAN is not presenting the disks to the server correctly, I woul dget the switches checked out, as well as the configuration.

[Torsten.]

@Jeff:

Just for information, what is the PDC level on your server?

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Torsten,

Sorry - I was mistaken, it's an N4000-55
PDC ==> 43.43 with PA8600 3.0 CPUs.

I have quite a few of these Ns with that PDC level & A5158 HBAs that do not exhibit this symptom.

Jeff

[Technical Help]

My PDC firmware version is 42.19

I'm not sure why this is of significance though?

[Andrew Moody_1]

Sorry, My firmware is 42.19, but I'm not sure of the significance of that to this issue.

The above post is our work support login. I got confused as to what I was logged in as

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi (again) Andrew,

Because you may have installed a fibre channel patch that is dependent upon a certain system FW level.
FIRST thing I would do is upgrade the FW - it may permanently solve this problem. If it doesn't - it's still the right thing to do regularly anyway.

My $0.02,
Jeff

[Torsten.]

PDC is *always* significant, e.g.

(quote from PHSS_30726 description)

Tachlite Fibre channel cards did not properly auto
speed negotiate with switch/device ports locked at
2gig speed. Revision 43.24 corrects this issue.

[Andrew Moody_1]

Many thanks Torsten and Jeff

I've done the firmware update, which was a little nervy as it's the first one I've had to do. Only 6 months in to this.

Anyway, it's not resolved the issue of missing disk on boot up, so back to the SAN switches methinks.

Thanks for your help. I've got a million more questions but I think it's time to go home to the wife and child for the weekend.

Andrew

[Andrew Moody_1]

The now seemingly obvious question is how do I find out what the current recommended PDC firmware level is for any of my servers?

[Mel Burslan]

Actually, if your server(s) is/are covered under some sort of HP service plan, you *should not* do the firmware upgrades yourself, as one wrong step can turn your machine into an expensive doorstop. So, if you have a support contract with HP, call them and they should be able to tell you what f/w revision level you should be at and be able to schedule to come out and do the upgrade.

HTH

[Andrew Moody_1]

You see Mel that's the sort of answer I like. Make it someone else's issue.

Having said that the one above went ok. But I'll check out our support options first.

[Darius Rudzika]

Check and fix/update (if needed) the follwing things:
- set SAN switch ports to fixed datarate
- set FC HBA driver to fixed data rate and fixed topology
- check SAN zone (keep HP-UX separated from other OSs)
- SAN switch and FC HBA firmware versions (also check HW compatibility matrix)
- storage firmware

good luck,
Darius