I'm happy to report that I received near-universal positive reports about
this configuration. There were several suggestions that should make the
configuration more reliable:
1) Use a SCSI hub. Info and configuration guidelines are at:
http://www.compaq.com/products/storageworks/Hubs-and-Bridges/hubs.html
ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/storageworks/SOW00WPF.PDF
2) Disable bus resets on each host's controller card (both the KZPSA and
KSPBA have an option to disable SCSI bus resets under some conditions).
3) Use the ACCESS_ID unit parameter to limit which hosts can see a given
HSZ70 unit, available on HSZ70 controllers. Unfortunately, we'll be using
HSZ50 controllers that don't support this option.
4) Use scu to reserve each device to the host that will be accessing it.
There was a general concensus that this configuration will be
"unsupported". From the SCSI hub configuration information, it looks like
using an HSZ70 in a similar fashion might be supported - I can't be
certain of that, however.
I'd like to thank the 11 list members who provided insight and
information:
Bill David
Alan Davis
Ian 'Ivo' Veach
Allan J. Simeone
Kevin S. Partin
Alan
Lars Bro
Ray Lauff
Judith Reed
Bryan Lavelle
Rodrigo Poblete
My original query follows . . .
--- Original Query ---
Has anyone tried running (successfully or unsuccessfully) a configuration
with multiple independent (not clustered) Tru64 Unix hosts sharing a SCSI
bus with a dual-redundant pair of HSZ50s?
Here's what we'd like to do:
<AlphaStation 500/500> <AS 500/500> <AS 500/266> HSZ50 [pair]
KZPSA (Target 7)--------KZPSA (T6)----KZPSA (T5)-------(Targets 0,1,2)
Basically, each host will end up using its own dedicated unit (and
associated LUNs) exported from the HSZ50 - the raidsets won't ever be
shared.
I recognize that this configuration (except for the fact that we're
running AlphaStations) is ideal for a TruCluster ASE configuration. In
fact, we're currently running two TruCluster clusters using both HSZ50s
and HSZ70s. However, some planned upgrades will result in our freeing up
a dual-redundant pair of HSZ50s; if at all possible, we'd like to have
multiple hosts benefit from their attached storage farm.
We have all of the necessary cabling and adapters - I'm mostly curious as
to whether anyone is using this sort of configuration, and if so, what
problems did the shared bus create?
Thanks (in advance) for tales of woe or glory!
Todd V. Minnella
Lead Unix Systems Administrator/Analyst
Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
Received on Tue Sep 07 1999 - 21:30:38 NZST