redhat 5 storage problem

Lupetto06 · 08-06-2008, 04:58 PM

Hello everyone,

I'm having big problems accessing a storage system (hp msa2212fc)from redhat 5. In the storage I created a single LUN (and single volume) with 10hdds in raid 1+0. The storage has dy controllers and each one is connected with a redhat server. Each one of the servers has two FC HBA cards (HP FC1142SR 4Gb PCI-e HBA).
The problem: I cannot see the storage from the linux servers. From the storage controllers management homepage I can see all the hba-s and they are online and functioning.
Can anyone offer some support, please? Some commands and info because unfortunately I don't have much experience with redhat.

Thank you.

farslayer · 08-07-2008, 10:16 AM

Are the drivers installed for the HBAs ?

Did you configure the HBA properly ?

Is the correct BIOS on the FC card ? "For RHEL5, FC1142SR Bios required minimum version is 1.26"

Device Manuals are here

For a specific device like that you might want to try the HP forums..

Lupetto06 · 08-07-2008, 01:54 PM

Thank you for your reply farslayer,

when working today I noticed a utility in redhat named LVM(Logic Volume Manager, if I remember right)and there I saw my uninitialized storage. I can't believe I missed that before. The storage was under this path
/dev/sda which I think is related to one of my hba controllers on the server. I'm a bit puzzled because for each server I have to adapters and I only see the storage under the /dev/sda on both servers. I think I should see the storage under for example /dev/sda and dev/sdb on both servers, right?
I want to see the storage from both hba controllers for redudancy,I'm going to configure an ORACLE based cluster on both servers. I'm also going to need a multipath sofware, what do you think?

Thank You
Lupetto06

farslayer · 08-07-2008, 07:10 PM

I think you would get answers that are more accurate from teh HP forums. I doubt there are too many people here that have a configuration like you are talking about, and the ones that do may not even see your post.

apparently there is a failover driver for your HBA's available from HP

this is from the HP forum I referred you to. ..
http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/...readId=1098737

Quote:

Solution for me is:

- for MSA1000 active/passive and Qlogic based HBA the multipath-tools in Linux are not supported
- you have to use the HP HBA driver

this means:
- do not use multipath-tools (SuSE) oder device-mapper-multipath (RedHat)
- do not follow the steps in "How to setup / use multipathing on SLES" from SuSE Knowledgebase
- do not follow the steps in "SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, Installation and Adminstration, Chapter 10: Multipath IO"
- do not follow the steps in "Device Mapper Multipath Configuratin Guide for HP StorageWorks Arrays" c00814876.pdf
- you do not need the Qlogic SANsurfer software
- use the driver hp_qla2x00-2006-10-11.zip

Problems for me were the missing documentation and a misbehaviour of the hp suppplied set_params script. If you have already some setup for the qla2xxx driver in /etc/modprobe.conf.local then you have to delete the corresponding entries before running the script. Otherwise parameters in /etc/modprobe.conf.local will not be set and driver works not in failover mode.

Checking the driver:
# grep version /proc/scsi/qla2xxx/0
Firmware version 4.00.23 [IP] , Driver version 8.01.06-fo
The -fo at lineend means that driver is working in failover mode.

Next steps were:
1. create units on the MSA 1000
2. rescan scsi bus
# hp_rescan -a
3. lookup the volumes
# lssd -l
sda 0,0,0,17 COMPAQ MSA1000 VOLUME 4.48 600805f3000ac5c0-92b5418c2e740043
sdb 0,0,0,18 COMPAQ MSA1000 VOLUME 4.48 600805f3000ac5c0-7e8eda90d6050044
sdc 0,0,0,19 COMPAQ MSA1000 VOLUME 4.48 600805f3000ac5c0-01818c9584e00045
sdd 0,0,0,20 COMPAQ MSA1000 VOLUME 4.48 600805f3000ac5c0-6e36459aa56d0046
sde 0,0,0,21 COMPAQ MSA1000 VOLUME 4.48 600805f3000ac5c0-14e6769fd0210047
sdf 0,0,0,22 COMPAQ MSA1000 VOLUME 4.48 600805f3000ac5c0-457669a4f4ab0048
#
I created six volumes on MSA1000 with unit numbers 16-21. SCSI LUN will be unitno+1. At the right side of lssd output you see the wwid
# lsscsi
[0:0:0:0] storage COMPAQ MSA1000 4.48 -
[0:0:0:17] disk COMPAQ MSA1000 VOLUME 4.48 /dev/sda
[0:0:0:18] disk COMPAQ MSA1000 VOLUME 4.48 /dev/sdb
[0:0:0:19] disk COMPAQ MSA1000 VOLUME 4.48 /dev/sdc
[0:0:0:20] disk COMPAQ MSA1000 VOLUME 4.48 /dev/sdd
[0:0:0:21] disk COMPAQ MSA1000 VOLUME 4.48 /dev/sde
[0:0:0:22] disk COMPAQ MSA1000 VOLUME 4.48 /dev/sdf
[1:0:0:0] storage COMPAQ MSA1000 4.48 -
#
lsscsi shows the path to the logical disks. In this example, the first HBA [0:0:0:0] is active.

4. for each volume, create a partition table, normally with one primary partition
# fdisk /dev/sda
...
5. create a filesystem with a label
# mke2fs -j -L myfilesystem /dev/sda1
6. you can mount the filesystem using the label
# mount LABEL=myfilesystem /mnt
The label gives you a persistant device binding. When adding other volumes to the SAN, the devices sda... may change.

Joachim