Yeah, I know, the description is pretty vague. Well, here's what I am trying to do. I have a Dell Poweredge, SuSE 9 64-bit, with 2 QLogic 2340 fibre channel cards, attached to an HDS 9570 SAN. We have been able to set up LVM just fine to the SAN, but would like to have multipathing active. There is very little information available on multi-path load balancing.
Here are 2 links where I have found some information on how to configure multipathing. I have set up MULTIPATH as per the following links:
http://support.novell.com/techcenter...multipath.html
and
http://support.novell.com/techcenter...tipathing.html
The first thing I did was to run the Expert Partitioner in YaST. The Expert Partitioner actually recognized my new SAN disks. Since I have dual paths connected to the SAN, it appears as though I have 10 10-GB drives. In reality, I only have 5 10-GB drives. In the Expert Partitioner, my HDS devices show up as follows:
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/dev/sdb 9.9 GB DF600F
/dev/sdb1 9.9 GB Linux RAID
/dev/sdc 9.9 GB DF600F
/dev/sdc1 9.9 GB Linux RAID
/dev/sdd 9.9 GB DF600F
/dev/sdd1 9.9 GB Linux RAID
/dev/sde 9.9 GB DF600F
/dev/sde1 9.9 GB Linux RAID
/dev/sdf 9.9 GB DF600F
/dev/sdf1 9.9 GB Linux RAID
/dev/sdg 9.9 GB DF600F
/dev/sdg1 9.9 GB Linux RAID
/dev/sdh 9.9 GB DF600F
/dev/sdh1 9.9 GB Linux RAID
/dev/sdi 9.9 GB DF600F
/dev/sdi1 9.9 GB Linux RAID
/dev/sdj 9.9 GB DF600F
/dev/sdj1 9.9 GB Linux RAID
/dev/sdk 9.9 GB DF600F
/dev/sdk1 9.9 GB Linux RAID
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I can also get the same information as above by running fdisk. Below is the output from the fdisk command:
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fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sdb: 10.7 GB, 10739515392 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1305 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 1305 10482381 fd Linux raid autodetect
Disk /dev/sdc: 10.7 GB, 10739515392 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1305 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 1305 10482381 fd Linux raid autodetect
Disk /dev/sdd: 10.7 GB, 10739515392 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1305 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdd1 1 1305 10482381 fd Linux raid autodetect
Disk /dev/sde: 10.7 GB, 10739515392 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1305 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sde1 1 1305 10482381 fd Linux raid autodetect
Disk /dev/sdf: 10.7 GB, 10739515392 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1305 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdf1 1 1305 10482381 fd Linux raid autodetect
Disk /dev/sdg: 10.7 GB, 10739515392 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1305 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdg1 1 1305 10482381 fd Linux raid autodetect
Disk /dev/sdh: 10.7 GB, 10739515392 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1305 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdh1 1 1305 10482381 fd Linux raid autodetect
Disk /dev/sdi: 10.7 GB, 10739515392 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1305 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdi1 1 1305 10482381 fd Linux raid autodetect
Disk /dev/sdj: 10.7 GB, 10739515392 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1305 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdj1 1 1305 10482381 fd Linux raid autodetect
Disk /dev/sdk: 10.7 GB, 10739515392 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1305 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdk1 1 1305 10482381 fd Linux raid autodetect
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Next, in YaST I create Multipath by going through the RAID wizard. I select "Multipath (Redundant access over two controllers), and then select "Autodetect Mutlipath". Once I do this, the YaST Expert Partitioner shows an additional device:
/dev/md0 0 MB MD Raid
Here's where I am getting a little confused. I am now ready to create my physical volumes (PV). Since I want to use multipathing, do I create 5 volumes or 10? Even though I only have 5 physical volumes on the HDS SAN, 10 actually show up. These 10 devices show up because of the dual paths that are physically connected. So I issue the following commands:
pvcreate -M2 /dev/sdb1
Physical volume "/dev/sdb1" successfully created
pvcreate -M2 /dev/sdc1
Physical volume "/dev/sdc1" successfully created
pvcreate -M2 /dev/sdd1
Physical volume "/dev/sdd1" successfully created
pvcreate -M2 /dev/sde1
Physical volume "/dev/sde1" successfully created
pvcreate -M2 /dev/sdf1
Physical volume "/dev/sdf1" successfully created
pvcreate -M2 /dev/sdg1 (THIS IS THE 6th VOLUME)
Found duplicate PV 4xz5: using /dev/sdb1 not /dev/sdg1
Found duplicate PV 4xz5: using /dev/sdh1 not /dev/sdc1
Found duplicate PV 4xz5: using /dev/sdi1 not /dev/sdd1
Found duplicate PV 4xz5: using /dev/sdj1 not /dev/sde1
Found duplicate PV 4xz5: using /dev/sdk1 not /dev/sdf1
WHAT ARE THESE ERRORS? Everything looked good until I created the 6th phsyical volume. Should I even be pointing to my /dev/sd* volumes? Is there an alias or virtual name I shoud be using instead? I get the impression that I should not be using the /dev/sd* volumes in pvcreate.
I then tried to create the volume group:
vgcreate hds01 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1 /dev/sdf1
Volume group "hds01" successfully created
To my surprise, it says that my volume group, hds01, was successfully created. When I display the volume group using vgscan, I don't see hds01. I just created it. Where did it go? Instead, I get "Found duplicate PV....".
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vgscan
Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while...
Found duplicate PV wa3rFW...Fmg: using /dev/sdg1 not /dev/sdb1
Found duplicate PV 6UPtjz...gxn: using /dev/sdh1 not /dev/sdc1
Found duplicate PV 1TQVFl...3x2: using /dev/sdi1 not /dev/sdd1
Found duplicate PV OThBAP...1WG: using /dev/sdj1 not /dev/sde1
Found duplicate PV lsyCYF...MlB: using /dev/sdk1 not /dev/sdf1
Found volume group "Dell01" using metadata type lvm2
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I feel like I'm off in the weeds. Can anyone offer any help?
