P4000 VSS Integration

[James Cochrane_1]

Hi all - I really hope you can help!

I've got an issue with the P4000s VSS integration with HP Support at the moment (it's at level 3 at the moment).

Effectively, I've got a target server which is installed as per the manual as follows:

Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Ed. (64-bit)
Microsoft iSCSI initiator 2.08

It has a system partition on a vmdk, and three native P4000 iSCSI volumes (on network raid 10).

HP P4000 DSM is not installed (multipath is performed by VMware).
HP P4000 VSS is installed (the latest), and the CLIQ is also installed - only just added this for debug.
The management group authentication is working as per the manual.

Application-aware snapshotting does not function from the CMC - which is a problem!

'vssadmin list providers' lists both the Microsoft and P4000 Provider, which is as expected.

When I do a vssadmin create shadow /For=E:, it uses the Microsoft Provider and creates a snapshot perfectly using MS technology (and the Oracle VSS Writer which is also installed).

However, I can run
cliq vssSnapshot volumeName=E:

This then creates an array based snapshot, but doesn't use the VSS writers - and boom - one dead database (that only admits to being destroyed the next time Oracle is started - not a very friendly problem)!

I have replicated this on a Windows 2008 R2 Server (without any Oracle or VMware) on a physical DL385 and a hardware based P4300.

Has anyone out there reliably got the VSS integration functioning? If so, please can you point me in a direction (other than the much read manual) to try to fix this?

Thanks for reading!