Storage Multipathing on Linux

[Philip Kirimi]

I have blade servers BL460c and BL680c attached to a HP EVA8000 storage. I can see all the 8 paths of to any presented disk but i have not managed to configure multipathing on the servers.
I need help on the configuration of multipathing on the servers.
The servers are running RHEL 4.3 64bit.

[melvyn burnard]

So why post this in the HP-UX forum?
Moving to more appropriate forum

[Brendan Murphy_5]

download & install lateset Proliant Support Pack for the architecture/OS version. As part of install process of this kit the appropriate FC HBA driver will be installed. If it's Qlogic, then you'll be queried on it's config ... select the Failover option. A qla module will be compiled & a new kernel built (this taints the kernel). You should then be ready to go. Don't know what the story is if you use emulex HBA's, but an HP supported emulex HBA driver will be installed if the PSP install procedure detects emulex HBA's. Please note you can't mix HBA types ... only one HBA type is allowed in each server.

[Bharath_Pingali]

Hello Philip,

I am not sure which HBA you are using on your blade server. The OS version that you are running is old considering that RHEL 4.[4/5/6/7] are available. Please check the release notes associated with the product to check if they are supported.

Emulex â Failover Software is MultiPulse
Links to Software â
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=3709945&prodSeriesId=1844100&prodNameId=1844101&swEnvOID=2026&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=co-61249-1
Qlogic â Failover Software is Qlogic Failover
Links to Software â
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=3709945&prodSeriesId=1844104&prodNameId=1844105&swEnvOID=2026&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=co-54962-2

Emulex or Qlogic â Failover software Device Mapper
Links to Software â
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&swItem=co-58129-1&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN


Hope this helps.

-Thank You
Bharath

[Philip Kirimi]

Hi,
One of the blade server a BL680c is on RHEL 4 release 6 with Qlogic HBAs. It has the latest Proliant support packs installed, but no multipathing is configured.
I intend to install the HPDMmultipath http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=3559651&swItem=co-64600-1&prodNameId=3559652&swEnvOID=2026&swLang=8&taskId=135&mode=4&idx=0
from HP. I would like to know whether i will be required to create the file systems again.

[Court Campbell]

You can use the dm-multipath that comes with from red hat. You just need to add the device lines for the eva in mulitpath.conf. You can find these on the web, or extract the multipath.conf file from the HPDM rpm. There is a lot of good documentation on red hat's site on dm-multipath.

[Philip Kirimi]

Let me go with the HP Device Mapper Multipath Enablement Kit method http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=3559651&swItem=co-64600-1&prodNameId=3559652&swEnvOID=2026&swLang=8&taskId=135&mode=4&idx=0
and see how far it takes me. I'll have to back up the filesystems though incase i'll need to recreate them.