Entries Tagged as 'EVA'

E.H.B.O. for EVA… What NOT to do!

  1. Check your environment (in my case an EVA4400 without any GB of data, both controllers failed, system down)
  2. DO NOT (I repeat) DO NOT TOUCH the EVA. (Leave all Disks as they are.)
  3. In my case HP was called by the customer.
  4. Go to the field-service page (that is still on the original CVE port)
  5. Go to command line
  6. Enter the given commands from HP support. (I will not mention them, but know them). At the time I went into the field-service page the EVA was gone from the CVE en in the Uninitialized part of the Service Tab. The situation was the 5 disks had failed within 1 day). Probably 2 in the sam e RSS set at the same time.
  7. Reseat the faulty disks.
  8. Again run command within field-service and restart CVE service.
  9. There your EVA is back again.

EVA back from the death of from a short coma?

What so ever. If you have 1 (ONE) problem. Do NOT pull, replace or what-so-ever on the EVA until you know you should. You are likely to introduce  more problems you can handle.

Tags: EVA, Storageworks by Bert Zefat
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HP 4400/6400/8400 Enterprise Virtual Array and HP EVA P6000 Storage controller software version XCS 11001000 Inactive

After working at a customer site and running into a problem expanding an EVA6400 (SPOF on a disk, so I/O controllers not code loading). I heard from support of HP there is a new XCS code for the EVA x400 series and P600 range.

Below document ID: c03571575

Release Date: 2012-11-13
Last Updated: 2012-11-13

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c03571575&lang=en&cc=us&taskId=101&prodSeriesId=3664763&prodTypeId=12169

DESCRIPTION

A critical issue has been discovered to potentially occur on HP Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) 4400/6400/8400 and HP EVA P63x0/65×0 systems running controller software version XCS 11001000. The potential for this issue is only on systems running software version XCS 11001000 and that are using VAAI functionality enabled on VMware ESX 4.1/ESX 5.x hosts.

NOTE: Version 11001000 is the only active XCS controller software with this issue; however, the potential for this issue also exists in the inactive XCS versions 10100000 and 11000000.

To ensure current and future systems will function as expected with VAAI enabled, XCS controller software version 11001000 is being retired and will be listed as Inactive in the HP controller software support matrix. Contact your HP Services representative for more information on the issue and to schedule an upgrade to the latest controller software that resolves this issue.

SCOPE

This issue affects HP EVA4400/6400/8400 and HP EVA P63x0/P65x0 arrays that are running XCS 11001000.

RESOLUTION

Contact your HP Services representative for more information on the issue and to schedule an upgrade to XCS version 11001100. The VAAI functionality must be immediately disabled until the controller software is upgraded to 11001100.

WORKAROUND

Disable VAAI functionality on all VMware hosts that access the HP EVA array until the controller software has been upgraded to XCS 11001100.

UPDATE 16-11-2012:

The XCS code be found -> https://h20392.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductsList.do?category=NAS

Tags: ESX, EVA, Storageworks, VMware, vSphere by Bert Zefat
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Best practices

HP Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) family with VMware vSphere 4.0, 4.1 and 5.0 Best practices
[Download]

Running VMware vSphere 4 on HP LeftHand P4000 SAN Solutions
[Download]

Best Practices for deploying VMware and vSphere 4 with VMware High Availability and
Fault Tolerance on HP P4500 Multi-Site SAN cluster
[Download]

HP P4000 LeftHand Solutions with VMware vSphere Best Practices (incl. vSphere 5)
[Download]

3PAR Utility Storage with VMware vSphere
[Download]

HP P2000 Software  Plug-in for VMware VAAI
[Download]

HP 3PAR Storage and VMware vSphere 5 best practices
[Download]

Tags: 3Par, ESX, EVA, P2000, P4000, Storageworks, VMware, vSphere by Bert Zefat
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IOP’s aanpassingen Alua Aware storage

Alle LUN’s standaard op Round-Robin zetten:

esxcli storage nmp satp set --default-psp VMW_PSP_RR --satp VMW_SATP_ALUA

Op alle LUN’s welke op Round-Robin staan de IOP’s op 1 zetten:

for i in `esxcli storage nmp device list | grep naa.600` ; 
do esxcli storage nmp psp roundrobin deviceconfig set -t iops -I 1 -d $i; done

Tags: ESX, EVA, P4000, Storageworks, VMware, vSphere by Bert Zefat
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EVAPERF “Access to the host was NOT verified

Sometimes I get the “nice” message from EVAperf, when adding a new CV/EVA host to the access list:

c:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packerd\EVA Performance Monitor>evaperf fnh 127.0.0.1 <username>
Access to the host was NOT verified
Host: 127.0.0.1 not added to the list

This also goes when changing 127.0.0.1 to localhost or the IP address of the host.

Turns out that the fqn of the host fixes this issue.

Tags: EVA by Bert Zefat
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EVA VAAI compliant?

Question that are thrown to me are:

Is the EVA VAAI compliant?
The EVA will be “vStorage APIs for Array Integration” (in short VAAI) compliant. It is NOT compliant at the moment.

Will it be in the next firmware release. Probably NOT.

The next… Probably YES. So we will have to wait, but until then the EVA should be fast enough by it’s own.

More information when available.

Tags: ESX, EVA, General, vSphere by Bert Zefat
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Disk alignment

Disk alignment is very important in every Operating system environment. But when you are using a SAN and also using VMware you should take disk alignement in account.

Above you see that the Guest OS (for example Windows) is not aligned with the VMFS and the VMFS is not aligned with the Array Blocks. Meaning that 1 I/O can result into 3 I/O’s on the storage device.

Now the VMFS has been aligned, but the Guest OS is still not. Now an I/O can result into 2 I/O’s on the storage device. Beter, but performance can still be improved.

Now all File Systems are aligned. On I/O results into 1 I/O, because all beginning of the blocks are at the same position.

Only Windows Vista, Windows 2008 and Windows XP has a trick to avoid this:

Tags: 3Par, ESX, EVA, P2000 by Bert Zefat
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UseLunReset and UseDeviceReset VMware


If you are using a SAN attached ESX environment, make  sure:
Disk.UseLunReset is set to 1 (default = 1)
Disk.UseDeviceReset is set to 0 (default = 1).

The reason to disable the Disk.UseDeviceReset param is because it does a complete SCSI bus reset. All SCSI reservations will be cleared, not for a a specific LUN but for the complete device (being the whole SAN controller).

This could disrupt your SAN fabric. I would suggest setting the ESX host in maintenance mode and reboot it afterwards.

Alternatively, you can also set this via the Service Console by issuing the following commands:

esxcfg-advcfg -s 1 /Disk/UseLunReset
esxcfg-advcfg -s 0 /Disk/UseDeviceReset
service mgmt-vmware restart

Tags: ESX, EVA, Storageworks, VMware by Bert Zefat
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Tuning ESX(i) for better storage performance


Many applications are designed to issue large I/O requests for higher bandwidth. ESX/ESXi 3.5 and ESX/ESXi 4.x support increased limits for the maximum I/O request size passed to storage devices. These versions of ESX pass I/O requests as large as 32MB directly to the storage device. I/O requests larger than this are split into several, smaller-sized I/O requests.

Some storage devices, like the EVA, have been found to exhibit reduced performance when passed large I/O requests (above 128KB). As a fix for this, you must lower the maximum I/O size ESX allows before splitting I/O requests.

To reduce the size of I/O requests passed to the storage device using the VMware Infrastructure/ vSphere Client:

  1. Go to Host > Configuration.
  2. Click Advanced Settings.
  3. Go to Disk.
  4. Select Disk.DiskMaxIOSize.
  5. Change value to 128.

Tags: ESX, EVA, Storageworks, VMware by Bert Zefat
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Answers to EVA4400 and WOCP questions

 

I’ve looked at the origin of all the search actions that came to my blog site. I can give following answers to most questions:

Q: What is the default IP address of the WOCP of an EVA4400.
A: The default IP address of the WOCP is 192.168.0.1.

 

Q: I lost my IP address of the WOCP, how can I recover it.
A: The main way is to go to your EVA4400. On the management module there is a little reset button. Press it (with a pen) until the network leds go off. Now it is set back to it’s default IP address.

 

Q: I can ping the IP address of the EVA, but do not get a web-site.
A: To access the CVE (Command View EVA), you should connect via: https://192.168.0.1:2372. (where 192.168.0.1 the IP address is of the WOCP). To connect to the WOCP, you should connect via: https://192.168.0.1:2373. (where 192.168.0.1 the IP address is of the WOCP)

 

Q: I want to upgrade my EVA4400 from a Pre 09520000 firmware. What should I do.
A: First get hold of the latest firmware for your EVA4400 (at moment of writing this it is 0953400 (this should also include the firmware upgrade for the WOCP)). Get hold of the latest hard disk firmware (at moment of writing this it is the bundle from 27 August 2010), and you need CVE (Command View EVA) 9.2.1 or up.
The firmware upgrade from a Pre 09520000 firmware is an OFFLINE upgrade. This means you have to SHUTDOWN the EVA after the firmware upgrade has been done.
Start with informing the users you will do the upgrade and you have AT LEAST 4 hours time.
Second make sure no other I/O will be generated by users, hosts, backup etc.
Start with the upgrade to CVE 9.1 (or above). This will alter some indexes on the metadata in the EVA. After upgrading to CVE 9.1 (or above), the EVA can not be managed again with CVE 8.x or lower.
Now make sure you have an SSSU “capture configuration” of you EVA. Some upgrades mess up the Vdisk naming.
Now start the firmware upgrade. First check your EVA is in good condition. So no warning signs, strange log issues and it is checked for it’s full redundancy.
Start the firmware upgrade. It will also upgrade the firmware of ALL the I/O modules inside the EVA. When you “think” the upgrade is complete. Take a BIG cup of coffee, and take a walk around the building. This just to make sure you take the time for the firmware to land inside the I/O modules. When the upgrade is complete, all I/O modules should give you firmeware version 0085. Some will not give you a good serial number read-out. So now we do the shutdown.
If all is shutdown propperly, start the enclosures and wait for all drives to spin-up. Now start the controller enclosure and head back to your management server. Wait for the EVA to come online and check again the I/O modules and the Vdisk names. If all OK, proceed. If not. CALL HP (or your nearby HP partner).
Now upgrade the WOCP to firmware (If you do not have management server, this would be your first step. (no reboot needed))
Now upgrade the firmware of all the harddisks.
If all goes well you have a very stable working EVA4400.

 

Q: I want to upgrade my EVA4400 from a 09522xxxxx  firmware. What should I do.
A: This is an ONLINE upgrade. You should already have CVE 9.2.1 (or above) running. If not, install it (9.3 recommended). Upgrade to the new firmware. Check again ifyour system is the same. Just in case upgrade the hard disks again. If upgrade is not needed, CVE will tell you.

Tags: EVA, Storageworks by Bert Zefat
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