Before you can start you need to have a few things setup and ready before you can initialize the array. The first thing that must be done is to install HP Command View EVA on a server that is SAN connected and has been zoned in to see the EVA array. This is essential because Command View EVA is used to manage the array.

You can see from the image below that I have logged into Command View EVA and it’s showing my new EVA and from the lower part of the screen in Red that the System is Uninitialized. So the first thing that I like to do is look over the EVA and make sure things match up to what was ordered. Once I am comfortable that everything is as expected I am ready to Initialize the array. To get this started just click on the Initialize button located at the top of the main screen.

After clicking on the Initialize button you will be presented with the following confirmation screen. The system is warning you that any data on drives will be lost. This is not a concern in this situation since this is a new Storage Array.

After clicking OK on the warning screen you will be presented with the following screen that allows you to set several features that will affect how your Array will function. I will not cover them all but the main ones. The first and most obvious is setting the System Name this will be what you want the EVA system name to be. Next is to select the Disk Failure Protection settings, this allows you to select the number of Hot Spare disks that will protect your Disk Groups. The options for this setting are None, Single or Double. This is a setting that should be selected carefully based on your needs. The next setting is the Disk group type setting, depending on your choice here will determine which Raid selections are available for use. With the Standard option you can use Raid 0, 1 and 5, and by selecting the Enhanced option you get the same Raid levels with the addition of Raid 6 to use.

In the section just below the name field you can set the number of disks that will be placed in the Default Disk group that will be created in this process. In the image below it’s showing us there are 74 disks online. In the field I have selected to have 8 place in the group, the remaining 62 disks would be place in the ungrouped disks section. If you know all of the disks are of the same size and class you could just dump them all into the initial group and save time.

The lower part of the screen from above is allowing you to set how the system time will be managed. I have selected to use the Management server which is the Command View server. Once all of your settings are done click the Initialize button at the top of the screen.

You will be presented with the warning shown below that confirms the disk group settings selected in the previous stage.

After confirming the warning listed above the system will start to initialize. You will seen a screen like the one below. This task can take from a few minutes to more than an hour.

Once the Initialize process completes you will get a confirmation screen like the one below and from the tree view on the left the array now reflects the system name that was assigned to it.

You can see from the image below that I have now expanded the tree to show the disk groups. In the default disk group that was created you can see the 8 disks that I choose to have placed in there. The remaining disks in the array were placed in the Ungrouped Disks section. I will change the name of the Default Disk group and continue to add more disks to the group.

From the image below you can now see the new disk group name. I will next start to add the Ungrouped disks into the group that I created. I won’t go into HP’s strategy to managing EVA arrays I’ll leave that for another post. But the short version is HP recommends creating large disk groups with like sized disks and add them in multiples of 8 disks. Also from the image below when clicking on a disk you can see the firmware version on the disk and its capacity size. You can use a Code Load when you finish grouping the disks to make sure they are all up to date on Firmware.

To add the disk to the group I created you just need to click on the disk and then click the Group button. You will then be asked to confirm the selection.

In this image you are asked to confirm the selection to group the disk. You must type YES and it does have to be in capital letters.

After passing the confirmation screen it will ask you what Disk Group you would like to add the disk to. You can see from the image below that you just choose the correct Group from the drop down list and then click Add Disk button.

And the final step shows that the Operation succeeded and the disk is now in the Disk Group that we selected. Now click OK and continue adding more disks to the group. Unfortunately using the Command View EVA console the disks can only be grouped one by one, so the process  can take awhile. If your a scripting person you may be able to use the SSSU command line that HP provides to add disks to a group.

About Brian

Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.

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I have to say that I’m a bit skeptical of the HP release dates for VAAI support. I have inquired about this internally with Product Managers and all I could get was sometime in calendar year 2011. That makes me think that it wont be Q1. I guess time will tell.

Update 12/22/2010 – I have been hearing the VAAI support for HP EVA and XP series will be in second half of 2011. Looks like they are saying that next major release of vSphere will be supporting a SCSI T10 standards based support for VAAI functions and they are waiting on this to release support. They will develop based on the standards support vs proprietary support.

About Brian

Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.

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For system admins it can make things like monitoring the health of your SAN connections and identifying which LUN correlates to the disk that you need expanded so much easier. So for these reasons it would be best for them to continue to use PowerPath. I searched the web for feedback to see what others have been doing and was surprised to see nothing. There was really no feedback out there. I did find some details about using PowerPath/VE with HP arrays but this version is for Hypervisors not Windows servers.

So after some further digging I was able to determine that I could use PowerPath version 5.5 with Windows servers to manage MPIO with HP Storage arrays. It will work with both EVA and XP class storage from HP. There are 32 bit and 64 bit versions available and I was able to test on both Windows Server 2003 and 2008 so far.

The install of PowerPath is pretty straight forward, the only thing that you must do special is to select the custom install option. You can see from the image below that you will have a few options to choose from for 3rd party Array support. I selected both the HP XP and Hitachi support since they will be using both EVA and HP XP’s which are made by Hitachi in the environment. After a reboot and a quick vDisk assignment on the EVA the storage was showing up properly in Windows.

The only part that was left was to get used to how the storage details would be showing up in PowerPath. Now when your using EMC storage the LUN ID with show up in the LUN column and is nice and clear. But when using it with the HP EVA the only way to match up the windows disk to the vDisk on the EVA was to use the Device details listed for the disk within PowerPath. I took a snapshot of the screen below.

You then need to match up the Device details that you found in PowerPath with the vDisk on the EVA that you can see by using the Command View EVA console. You can see that the WW LUN Name for the vDisk matches up with the Device column inside of PowerPath and this will help you match up your vDisks with the Windows disks. This makes disk expansions and assigning disks with different Raid levels to the proper drive letter in Windows much easier.

About Brian

Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.

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So it is with that preface that I arrive at discussing the SSSU: HP’s Storage Scripting System Utility. The premise of this utility is to allow command line access to an EVA. The idea is, at least from HP’s perspective, to use it for repetitious activities that would be otherwise tiresome in Command View. Additionally, you can also issue interactive commands like restarting a controller or changing mastership for disks between controllers manually. HP bundles the SSSU installer with Command View’s installer package. It carries the same versioning as Command View (so in my case, 9.1.0).

SSSU seems like a really great idea. I love the command line (being very partial to a bash shell ), but SSSU isn’t a real CLI in that sense. The first round of trouble is in the output: SSSU generates XML based output that a human can’t simply open up and read. This throws out a simple way to grab information that would otherwise take a lot of time via CV. This posting is an overview of SSSU, and I will write a follow up post that goes more into depth on what you can do with the output to make it actually usable in conjunction with Microsoft’s Logparser tool. Sad I know. You can pony up big $ to get actual tools but hey, in tight times, stretching the imagination is better than stretching the wallet. I’ll also put up some of the scripts I use to gather data on disks and such (ex: easy way to track disk size and growth).

At this point, let’s get SSSU fired up and play around a bit. To launch, log into your CV server and run that fancy icon on the desktop. One quick gripe: no way for me to install this on my own laptop to just run and connect with. To get around that, I copy over from the CV install to my local machine the SSSU.exe file. It runs great and it’s just that less than 2 meg file. Upon launching it, you get to login.

You get three parts to a login:

You can login with a domain account without any issue, so you don’t have to create a whole separate user account list. One thing to note is that although you can fire up multiple SSSU windows to one array, you can only execute commands to it one at a time (serial baby!), so when one command is running in one window, your other windows would hang if you tried to execute a command).

After logging in, you are sitting at a default path, so to speak. That being that you have not selected your array.

Hitting ? and enter will list off all the commands available. This can also be used to find out what options each command has available.

Object names are case sensitive and are organized in a root tree system. Commands and objects with spaces in their names require double quotes. The first thing to do is select an EVA to work with, using the term select system.

You can flip around using the select system command. At this time there isn’t a way to issue group commands (outside of scripting, and even then it’s not a group command, in that sense).

Root Structure of Objects:

\Hosts

“\Disk Groups”

“\Virtual Disks”

\Hardware

Note that you can create objects (like folders) under all but \Hardware. Objects created are purely for human organization. The EVA doesn’t care if you have them or not (though if you do create them you need to be aware of the “path” to them.

A complete listing of the commands can be found in the SSSU reference doc, found here:

http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c02493404/c02493404.pdf

This link is for the latest (I believe rolled into Command View 9.3) as of this date (9.23.2010).

My advice would be to look through the command reference to understand what the commands do. Listing them all out here in a blog post would be silly. And a lot of work, and I’m lazy, so….

As promised before, I will follow up this post with a more in-depth guide for where SSSU is handy and probably some more complaints on how it’s irritating. J

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So as you can see, we have a total Capacity (which is correct and accurate), and the Occupancy. The information listed is correct, and it’s refreshing. Now, for the problematic Disk Group (and please ignore the name as it was before my time).

Here we see the correctly calculated Capacity, but lo! What’s this? What on earth is going on with that Occupancy? It seemingly continues to grow a bit here and there as we take snapshots of various. HP doesn’t know what’s wrong either. When we upgrade from Command View 9.0 to 9.1, it did not fix the issue either. The big problem here is that we have to figure out how much space is actually used since we’ll never get alerted. It is a pain. I can turn to Replication Solutions Manager to obtain the correct size by simply adding all the luns (easy way to view them, as opposed to Command View), so that’s the workaround. Not very satisfying if you consider how much money was spent on these beasts.

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Launched from the shortcut on the Windows host, or is accessible via a web browser at https://servername:2372

You are presented with the login screen:

It is here that you will also see the version number (down below). We have not yet upgraded this server to version 9.2 as we are building a VM to run Command View from and retire this physical box.

After login, you are greeted by the overview page. Here you will see all the EVAs listed, as well as the stats for your overall environment. The first thing of note is that two of my EVAs have bang lights on them, indicating something is amiss. I’ll investigate both as part of my next posting.

On the top right, there are some hyperlinks, your login id, and the ip of the Command View server. Most are self explanatory. Server Options provides for a place to enter license codes, setup RSM relationships, and a few other features. I seldom visit this page, so like once a year?

Moving right along, let’s take a look at a healthy EVA, in this case DS-SAN-2:

As you can see from the above, a healthy EVA has a number of folders beneath it. It breaks out into many subfolders. On the right hand side are the numbers. It would be here that you can get the logs for HP support (I’ll cover that in a separate blog post). You can see the current capacity level, view the Version level (this is the XCS code release running on the EVA. 6220 is the latest for the 8100 series). The left column is broken down like such:

Virtual Disks – this is where the luns (vdisks in EVA-speak) are listed. The folder structure is entirely man-made. That is to say, it’s for human organizational purposes (and plays an important role for setting up RSM jobs. More on that will be covered on a separate posting).

Hosts – here is where hosts are setup in Command View. You will provide the host’s OS, and it’s WWN’s for fiber cards. Hosts MUST be setup on every single EVA that you want to present disks from. Annoying, I know.

Disk Groups – these are comprised of physical disks. Best practice says to build these in multiples of 8, and of all the same speed and size. You can choose to not follow these and your performance will suck majorly. I’ve worked on rebuilding two of the 4 EVAs that had improperly constructed Disk Groups. It is PAINFUL to correct, but I’m glad I did. I will cover that also as a separate blog post. FYI: The ungrouped disks folder is for disks that have failed or been ungrouped on purpose. Ungrouping takes time as the EVA moves data from the drive to free it up to be removed or replaced.

Data Replication – it is here that you can create DR groups. This allows you to replicate (synchronous or asynchronously) between EVA arrays. A replication group is comprised of 1 or more vdisks. Sounding like a broken record, I will have a separate posting on replication.

Hardware – it is here that you can check out the status of the hardware. Both controllers are listed, as are all the disks. If there are hardware issues (per a bang light) then you can come here to find out why. The status of failed items is usually fairly straightforward and understandable as to what happened and what should be done.

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So, as an overview for the environment, we currently have 3 8100 series and one 4400 series. EVAs arrays use two controllers, and our models are active/active. Our VMware environment at work is currently a VI3 schmorgesborg and we are planning an update (well migration) to vSphere. For SAN switches, we have older Mcdata’s that are workhorses! We manage them using EFCM software (also java, sigh).

HP provides Command View for EVA as the management tool for the EVAs. This installs and runs on Windows, and is now supported running in a VM as of the current release (9.2). Replication is handled with Business Copy and Continuous Access (separately licensed features). Automation of replication is handled using Replication Solutions Manager, which is a java-based App. :-/

For my next post, I’ll be giving a walkthrough of Command View and discuss how the EVAs we have are configured. Lots of screenshots too!

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The configuration was a breeze just like the initial setup. The disks were placed evenly across the disk shelves and appeared into the console as expected. A couple of clicks later I had a vDisk setup and then created to volumes and assigned them to my hosts once I had created the Datastores from the first Host.

If you need to know more about how to setup these you can read my initial post on how to setup a HP MSA 2300 series array here.

About Brian

Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.

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First thing you will need to do is to download the proper EMC grab version to support your hosts. At the time of writing this its a version 1.2.1 and is supports both ESX 3 and 4. Proceed on over to http://powerlink.emc.com and download it from the support programs area.

Once you have the file you will need to upload it to your host with something like WinSCP. I always upload it into the /tmp folder and unzip it there. It will create a folder called “emcgrab”. You can use the following command to do the unzip in case your not familiar with what to do.

tar -xvf emcgrab_ESX_vSphere_v.1.2.1.tar

Next thing is to move into the emcgrab directory that was created. From within there you will need to execute the following command. If you read the help file included in the directory it will explain some options to supress some annoying confirmation screens about the licensing and such.

./emcgrab.sh -nomsg

Once the program starts to run depending on the options you used it will prompt you to confirm and read the licensing. After you pass that part it will ask you a string of questions about your contact details and some questions about your environment. These are not necessary to complete it you are using these grabs in house. If you plan on sending these to EMC then I would advise to fill them out.

Once the script completes it will ask you if you want to run vm-support to collect the VMware support logs along with the EMCgrabs. This is up to you, if you have a need for them go ahead. Once the script finished it will place the zipped up file in the Output folder and you can pull off the file with WinSCP.

In closing it’s not necessary to be running Powerpath on your hosts to collect these grabs.

About Brian

Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.

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After reading this short document you will be able to get that new MSA array up and running quickly. I set my array up to talk to a small 3 node vSphere cluster but the setup would be the same if you were using for a Windows cluster or most other uses.

You can download the PDF of the document How to Setup MSA array here.

Update 1-10-2011

I saw that someone else has created a Best practices document for the P2000 series. It’s not an official document but worth a look for new users. Have a look here.

About Brian

Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.

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