Question on Tru64 5.1 and HSG80 snapshots

From: Martin Petder (martin@kungla.ee)
Date: Tue Oct 08 2002 - 07:12:36 EDT


Hello all

Having dropped to a little discussion here with HP support I would like
to ask an opinion on:

Whether it's possible to use HSG80 snapshot feature with Tru64 Unix 5.1
if the ACS version is 8.6S?

Our tests seem to indicate and HP is trying to tell us that it's
impossible (i.e. SCSI Unit Attention commands sent out by HSG80 after
completion of snapshot would be interpreted by Tru64 5.1 as Scsi error
messages and initiate a error recovery from the Alpha; which in turn
would mess up HSG80 (disable the snapshot, log some ugly messages to fmu
and in extreme cases crash the storage))..

But HP is relying only on one document to say this (release notes for
Enteprise Volume Manager 2.0C, Tru64 platform agent); it's not mentioned
anywhere else (even in the later version, 2.0D release notes). We are
not using EVM. And all other HPQ material seems to indicate no problems
with Snapshots and Tru64...

So the question is: has anybody anywhere been able to do a snapshot with
HSG80, ACS8.6S(-*), Tru64 5.1 with AdvFS? Or are there any relevant
patches to apply? :)

The enivronment in question is:
- MA8000 storage (2xHSG80 with ACS 8.6S-8, ~10 units altogether),
    transparent failover mode, SCSI-3.
- ES40 with Tru64 5.1, PK1, no clustering, Oracle 8.1.7, 2xKGPSA
- 2xSanSwitch 8EL, interconnected.
- Other servers connected to storage:
    - 1xWin2000 (Proliant, 1xKGPSA) server
    - 3xLinux server (Proliant, 1xQla2200)
    - 1xAS1000, Tru64 5.1, PK1, no clustering, Oracle 8.1.7, 1xKGPSA

So far ~80% of cases we're trying to do snapshots from units connected
to ES40 would result in "Snapshot disabled", sometimes crashing one of
the HSGs.

When trying to do snapshots from other units (not connected to Alphas)
we would get freezing of the CLI (both in SWCC and serial-port) and
disabling of the original units and snapshot units. It doesn't happen
when Alphas are not working.

So - hoping for any ideas :)

-- 
Sincerely
Martin Petder
========================
Kungla Dialoog C.P.
tel. +372 6 115 300
fax  +372 6 115 301
e-mail martin@kungla.ee
========================


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Sat Apr 12 2008 - 10:48:55 EDT