People,
My many thanks to the following:
Blair Phillips [blairp_at_spirit.net.au]
Robert Mulley [Robert.Mulley_at_Hawke.co.uk]
Tahaney, Tim [Tim.Tahaney_at_factiva.com]
Ed Murphy [Ed.Murphy_at_ussurg.com]
Matthias Dolder [matthias.dolder_at_compaq.com]
Also to our Compaq people, whom will be arriving on site tomorrow. Welcome
to my web says the spider to the fly... BTW what do we classify these people
as nowadays, they are no longer Digits, and I don't know if Compits is
overly flattering...
Cheers,
Guy
>From Blair:
a couple more documents to look at:
"Heterogeneous Storage Area Networks Application Note"
http://www.compaq.com/support/techpubs/user_reference_guides/ek-sma30-an-a01
.html
This is out of date, as it refers to Tru64 v4.0f, so it doesn't have the
multibus failover stuff. However it is still useful.
"MA6000 HSG60 Array Controller ACS Version 8.5 Solution Software for Compaq
Tru64 UNIX Installation and Configuration Guide"
http://www.compaq.com/products/storageworks/techdoc/raidstorage/AA-RMBHA-TE-
T64.html
The HSG60 is just a HSG80 with 2 rather than 6 device ports, so the host end
of it should be very similar. You could look at some of the other I&C Guides
on
http://www.compaq.com/products/storageworks/modulararray/ma6000userdoc.html
for comparison purposes.
The permutations between FC-AL/FC-SW, SCSI-2/SCSI-3 and transparent/multibus
failover make it quite difficult to share a controller pair between
different operating systems. I am reasonably sure that OpenVMS and Tru64
v5.0A can share controllers.
Solaris requires transparent failover and cannot share with OpenVMS.
I think Windows NT cannot share with OpenVMS, but can't remember why
(probably SCSI-2 vs SCSI-3).
You can of course have storage controllers dedicated to the different
operating systems, using zning in the switches to keep them separate.
We went through all this stuff about 6 months ago before deciding not to try
to share a SAN across operating systems. The release of Tru64 v5.0A and the
updates to OpenVMS v7.2-1 have changed the rules since then.
Anyway, if you are spending this much money, lean on COMPAQ for some sales
support.
Blair Phillips
>From Robert:
My experience with HSG's says that Switches are always better than hubs. The
main problem with multpile OS's is that they all see storage and try to grab
it, this is why you need to setup your connections and access restrictions
to each unit. Very easy to do and limits which boxes can see which storage.
I am positive that any version V4.0F or later supports fibrechannel. v4.0F
and G have the problem that the can still only see 8 ID's per channel,
therefore on a dual port HSG80 they can only use 16 units. v5 and above
using WWID stuff can see all units. HSG differ from HSZ as HSG allow units
d0-99 (port1) and d100-199 for port 2.
You should note that, for Tru64 v4.0F support for fibrechannel you need to
install the weirdest Compaq patch I've ever seen. Though you also need to
install this patch to support DE600's. It's not installed using the dupatch
method, refer to
ftp://ftp.service.digital.com/public/dunix/v4.0f/nhd3.README if you want to
go down that path.
Anyway that's about all I can offer at this point. I'm not 100% sure on the
differences between SCSI-3, Ultra-SCSI etc... so I may be wrong about v5
supporting SCSI-3. Time to end my incoherent ramblings.
Robert Mulley
>From Tim:
ra8000/esa12000 Solutions Software for Tru64 UNIX
installation referance guide.
(aa-rfaub-te)
The above document is helpful - but overall it's a learning
experiance configuring these envirorments as many of the
problems we've run across aren't documented clearly.
Each OS seems to have it's own issues on installing.
Tru64 4.0f only recognizes the first 8 targets (systems) on a FC Bus, if
your hsg80 gets configured at the end of the table - you can't communicate
with these HSG80's or the disks
on them. The solution to this is to use emxmgr utility to
reassign targets from a text file to ensure the hsg80's can
consistantly be found.
NT 2000, we have had these systems bring the whole fabric down because the
wrong driver was configured - operator error, but still had hoped these
switches were more resilant.
Sun SOlaris - Our sun experts had problems setting up the sd.conf entries
for wwn to scsi target bindings on these
systems.
>From Ed:
Hello Guy,
Did you see
http://www.tru64unix.compaq.com/faqs/publications/updates/nhdv2/BMXXXXXX.HTM
This may help.
Best regards,
Ed Murphy
>From Matthais:
Guy
Tru64 UNIX V5.0 supports SCSI-3 protocol but no FC, ie. no HSGs, SANs aso.
Tru64 UNIX V5.0a supports SCSI-3 and FC.
The same applies to TruCluster Server V5 variants (keeping in mind that
TruCluster
Server V5.0 never shipped generally with TruCluster Server 5.0a being the
first V5 general cluster release, supporting all the FC stuff).
One of the real nice V5.0a features in a SAN environment is the out of the
box
multipathing, supporting active-active paths and transparent failover.
The best document i currently can recommend to read is the:
"Hardware Configuration Technical Update for Fibre
Channel for TruCluster Server Version 5.0A"
which can be found at:
(html)
http://tru64unix.compaq.com/faqs/publications/updates/TCR50A_FC/TITLE.HTM
(pdf)
http://tru64unix.compaq.com/faqs/publications/updates/TCR50A_FC/tu-fc-v50a.p
df
[mind line wrapping, depending on your mail system]
hth
MatthiasD.
-----------------------------------------------
Compaq Computer AG, Switzerland
Matthias Dolder
Guy R. Loucks
Senior Unix Systems Administrator
Networks Branch
NSW Department of Education & Training
Information Technology Bureau
Direct +61 2 9942 9887
Fax +61 2 9942 9600
Mobile +61 (0)429 041 186
Email guy.loucks_at_det.nsw.edu.au
Received on Tue Aug 08 2000 - 23:44:49 NZST