XP512 - configuring for Database

[Roger Baptiste]

hi,

Can somebody pls post info on XP512. (configuration, things to watch out etc).
Any links, notes and suggestions will be gratefully accepted. I am more familiar with
EMC arrays and this is my first shot at XP. So am looking for info from folks who use XP.

thanks
-raj

[Roger Baptiste]

Request to Forum admins - Can you please keep this thread in the hpux forum. (in case you want to move it to Storage section). For alas, there are very few gurus who haunt the Storage area frequently. (i will do a more specific related post there).

thanks
-raj

[harry d brown jr]

Raj,

i wish I had an XP (not the micropuke one) to play with. We are big emc shop (we just spent abut 10mil on hardware). I have a va7400 and I like it 100 times more than emc. Easy to use, and maintain.

live free or die
harry

[Steven Sim Kok Leong]

Hi,

For most of the standard information, you can do a search and retrieve them from the HP product website.

I was involved in the XP256 last time. Used stkio tool from storagetek to benchmark IOs/sec, Mb/sec, duration for random/sequential reads/writes.

At my time, the SAN was still FC-AL. Now fabric switching is already available for some time.

The HP hardware engineers insisted that I do not handle the XP256 because I am not trained. Thus, LUN assignment and movement is usually performed by HP hardware engineers. :)

Hope this helps. Regards.

Steven Sim Kok Leong

[Animesh Chakraborty]

Hi Raj,
I am also familiar with EMC disk array only.
But searched this documents for you.
http://www.hp.com/cposupport/manual_set/lpg28552.pdf


Hope this helps
Animesh

[Roger Baptiste]

Steve - i had searched for the docs and came up with only one useful one, the same one which Animesh pointed to. Sort of surprising, because HP is supposedly pushing hard to sell this product.! Atleast EMC has more exhaustive docs on their site.

Animesh - Thanks for the link. I already have it and based on that guide and some other sources, i came up with some questions which is posted on the Storage forum.

Thanks for the quick responses. But, where are the XP gurus! ??? ;-) C'mon Let the rabbit out of the hat!!

-raj

[Wodisch]

Hello Raj,

kind of that problem I tried to solve in last october, so I just point you to the threads of my questions:

XP512 and the FC in "high performance mode":
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x3f17ec7c4fc4d5118ff10090279cd0f9,00.html

Oracle8i on SuperDome/XP512:
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x11cbf715edc6d5118ff10090279cd0f9,00.html

I am sorry to say that I do not have a summary of the most successful parameters, as I have not met the other guys since...

HTH,
Wodisch

[Roger Baptiste]

Woodi, Thanks for the info. But the discussions you had seemed to have reached a dead end ;-( and some of the stuff (CHIPS etc..) seemed over the top to me ;-).

Any further info on Xp512 configuration/setup would be welcome.

thanks
-raj

[Helen French]

Hi Rajman,

Some useful links:

http://www.hp.com/products1/storage/disk_arrays/highend/xp512/index.html

http://managementsoftware.hp.com/products/sam/Documents/General_HTML-281.asp

http://www.hp.com/cposupport/manindex/hpsurestor21443_eng_man.html

HTH,
Shiju

[Ian Dennison_1]

We have a XP-512 here, and I kind of preferred the EMC at my previous job, because it was simpler! Lots of options on the XP, very few solutions.

Have the XP512 course notes but they tell you how, not why. Perhaps if we get the XP Gurus to start posting in the Storage area of the forums, we can get some knowledge transfer going?

Share and Enjoy! Ian

[Roger Baptiste]

>

Ian, you said it right. Finding info and details of EMC is easier than XP. (even though EMC is supposed to be propertary stuff..)

Can you post a quick summary on how your XP is configured. RAID type ? Which Emulation mode -? Do you use only one type of emulation or is it a mixture of modes? Stripe/extent size for VG config. How you spread the PV of VG?

thanks
-raj

[Ian Dennison_1]

<< Can you post a quick summary on how your XP is configured. RAID type ? Which Emulation mode -? Do you use only one type of emulation or is it a mixture of modes? Stripe/extent size for VG config. How you spread the PV of VG? >>

I am new to this myself, and someone else set up our XP, so I will try to relate what we have and the rationale behind it. Anything I omit is because I do not know what or why. But I am learning! Anything that is wrong is welcome to be discussed so others may get the benefit.

Configuration is 2 cabinets (the processor cab plus L1). We have 4 Brocade switches, and each Server has 2 Fibre Channel connections to 2 completely separate sets of Switches (preparing for ServiceGuard implementation). We are running Raid 5.

There are so many redundancy factors that sometimes the head spins just trying to figure it out.

We are running Open*9 emulation, but only because it was the only one we brought. We are not running Business Copy (yet) and have brought LUSE but not VSC (String several disks together to make one but not split a single disk apart).

For future proofing, I have recommended the following at our site,???

All Oracle Redo Logs in their own Disk and Volume Group (in preparation for Caching of Redo Logs in the memory plus Business Copy)
All Oracle Database Files in their own Volume Groups, sized as 21GB (3 x Open-9 Disks bound together). No real reason for the number 21, other than we match this configuration across other Oracle Instances in preparation for Business Copy and OmniBack Integration for Backups. (ie. All disks must be same size)
All Oracle Executables, Config and any Applications in another set of Disks, to keep separate from the DB.
All reasonable attempts to spread load across internal channels (specifically the high-hit Production Databases across different Units and Fibre / Copper Links)

Have come into the picture too late to be involved in disk striping etc, but will examine over the next month or so.

We have gobbled 4 TB in very short order, with very little space now left. We are also running short of LUN Numbers; allocating 7GB disks left, right and centre has used most of them. The Users say ???great, magic box with heaps of space; can I have another system please???? (a la Oliver Twist).

One thing I have taken from my current exposure with XP512 is that planning for space, LUNs and future configurations is essential. I will have to re-engineer most of our Production Server disk configurations eventually when we get Business Copy, and hopefully by then will have investigated Disk Striping and so forth.

Share and Enjoy! Ian

[Victor BERRIDGE]

Hi,
What sort of info are you looking for?
I have 2 L2000 /HPUX11i connected to a HDS9960 (like XP512) through fiber in fabric (dedicated 2 brocade switches) with on each 1 5158 HBA and 2 JNI HBA... another L2000 and a N4000 and 2 nighthawk nodes (SP2) and 2 P660 and 2 R280 (solaris) and... and a OS390 (...)
the lot on fabric except the OS390 (escon) the lot works fine...

All the best
Victor

[Roger Baptiste]

Victor,

I am basically looking for info on factors which i need to consider in configuring XP for good performance. The h/w config part will be done through SVP by HP, but i would like to give the specs on how it needs to be done.
Similar to what i do on EMC where we suggest on the number of splits, metas etc for the bin file.

So for HP, i guess the things to look for are - what emulation mode to use? should i use only one type of emulation mode? How to make sure the luns are all suitably striped and so on.

thanks
raj

[Wodisch]

Hello again,

can you get the "Performance Manager/XP" (or similiar name) installed (a little pricey) on your XP?
It really shows a lot of details about what's going on and where!
IIRC, then you do not have soo many choices with the "modes" - the "host mode" is fixed for HP-UX, the striping is fixed as soon as you start with it (depending on disk-size I would recommend the biggest stripes possible, to save LDEV ids for the future - you can waste a lot of them easily, and then lack free ones when you try to add hard disks)
- LUN Manager/XP you'll have anyway
- RAID Manager/XP you should have to control LUNs and BCs and CAs from HP-UX (much easier than the SVP, RCPC)
- LUSEs were supposed to be a little slower than LVM-striped LUNs, but AFAIK this has been fixed with the recent microcode releases
- XP512 uses FC internally, which gives (gave, when I looked last) something like 50MB/s to the individual disk drives internally, so for performance reasons you might not want to populate all disk bays in one CU, but distribute them over all CUs (and hence internal FC buses) evenly, same for multiple DKUs (which then needs more ACPs)
- keep an eye on the amount of Shared Memory vs. Cache

Get a list of ALL the tools/products available and have them explained to you in some detail, as you could waste a lot of time and effort by not using the proper ones... (and the training isn't bad at all)

Well, lots of acronyms, all this just out of my "TB" (tired brain), so it might be inaccurate ;-)

HTH,
Wodisch

[Roger Baptiste]

Woodi,


I presume you are referring to OPEN-X
emulation modes. ?

< (depending on disk-size I would recommend the biggest stripes possible, to save LDEV ids for the future - you can waste a lot of them easily, and then lack free ones when you try to add hard disks)>

Good point to note. OPEN-E looks reasonable.

<<- LUN Manager/XP you'll have anyway >>

All i have is xpinfo ;-) The hp engg will
do the carving using the SVP.

<>

Can you pls elaborate on the concept of Controlunits. I don't see CU mentioned specifically in the architecture diagram of XP,
but it is there on the sample Lun charts.


<< keep an eye on the amount of Shared Memory vs. Cache >>

Cache i guess is a untouchable thing, other than pouring more into the bucket. Whats the
importance of Shared memory. IIRR, this was being touted as one added benefit over EMC.

thanks!
-raj

[Xin Chen_1]

Hi, Guys

It seems that a lot of people here are interested in the architecture of XP disk arrays. I happen to be the person who is responsible for the training of XP hardware and softwares for HP internal users. If you are a HP employee, please send me an email (x_chen@hp.com) and I can give you our training materials. Sorry I cannot give those information to customers.

Some general information regarding performance:

1. Emulation mode does not affect performance. But it is recommended to use large emulation mode to prevent you from running out of ldev numbers.
2. Avoid using 181GB drives if performance is your goal.
3. When mapping luns to CHIP ports, remember to have evenly distributed even and odd luns on each port. For example, if you have 8 ports CL1A,B,C,D and CL2A,B,C,D, with luns 1:00 - 1:0f, the mapping will look like this:
CL1A&CL2A -> 1:00,1:01,1:02,1:03
CL1B&CL2B -> 1:04,1:05,1:06,1:07
CL1C&CL2C -> 1:08,1:09,1:0a,1:0b
CL1D&CL2D -> 1:0c,1:0d,1:0e,1:0f
Every time you create new luns, you should do the mapping in the same way.
4. Stripng is recommended if possible. For best performance, try to create stripped volume across all possible CHIP ports, Array Groups and ACP pairs or at least stripping across several CHIP ports and Array Groups. Stripe depth should be determined by the block size of file system or db_block_size in Oracle. For general purpose, try to use 64k.
5. Performance Advisor or Performance Manager is recommended for troubleshooting inside XP.
6. For Oracle you can try Precise suite with Performance Advisor plug-in (http://www.precise.com/news/pr082101.asp). But I have no experience with that.
7. Don't connect more than two hosts to the same CHIP ports if they are all i/o intensive.

Good luck!