Put Storwize(v7000) behind the SVC and do not confuse what you see

When you configure your SAN configuration and zone the SVC and v7000 together  you will see that two v7000 controllers will be appear, after i check on the internet is it true and maybe before i have to check this link first

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/anthonyv/entry/virtualizing_a_storwize_v7000_with_an_ibm_svc?lang=en

i have extra words, all presented volumes on v7000 without what preferred owner set  appear under configuration v7000 node controller on SVC, pls see below

Don’t worry that load balance is always working , check SAN traffic to find out ….

Also before configure mdisks and mdiskgroups pls read best practice paper before implement but shortcut for your all

On v7000 site :

Create 1 mdiskgroup

svctask mkmdiskgrp -ext 256 -name name_of_mdiskgroup -warning 80%

Create 1 array and assign it to such mdiskgroup

svctask mkarray -drive 12:36:34:19:20:18:16:15 -level raid5 -sparegoal 1 name_of_mdiskgroup

Numbers are disk you can list it under v7000

On SVC site:

You will see  mdisks under v7000 controller, create mdiskgroup from this mdisks and start to create volumes ..

 

My full commands ;

 

IBM_2076:EMPIRE2:superuser>svctask mkmdiskgrp -name mdiskgroup1 -ext 32 -warning 80%

MDisk Group, id [0], successfully created

IBM_2076:EMPIRE2:superuser>svctask mkmdiskgrp -name mdiskgroup2 -ext 32 -warning 80%

MDisk Group, id [1], successfully created

IBM_2076:EMPIRE2:superuser>svctask mkmdiskgrp -name mdiskgroup3 -ext 32 -warning 80%

MDisk Group, id [2], successfully created

IBM_2076:EMPIRE2:superuser>svctask mkmdiskgrp -name mdiskgroup4 -ext 32 -warning 80%

MDisk Group, id [3], successfully created

IBM_2076:EMPIRE2:superuser>svctask mkmdiskgrp -name mdiskgroup5 -ext 32 -warning 80%

MDisk Group, id [4], successfully created

 

svctask mkarray -drive 12:36:34:19:20:18:16:15 -level raid5 -strip 128 mdiskgroup1

svctask mkarray -drive 14:17:35:46:40:39:42:45 -level raid5 -strip 128 mdiskgroup2

svctask mkarray -drive 43:44:37:38:47:0:41:24 -level raid5 -strip 128 mdiskgroup3

svctask mkarray -drive 11:10:8:7:31:30:29:33 -level raid5 -strip 128 mdiskgroup4

svctask mkarray -drive 32:28:27:26:6:5:3:2 -level raid5 -strip 128 mdiskgroup5

 

VM

Storwize First Time Installation Step1

Now, i have a v7000

First you need to download and copy the tool to your USB drive, pls be careful your USB drive should be formated FAT32, if you format NTFS like me V7000 can not write down the response file and you start to hate from such process, be careful ….

V7000 Initial Tool Link

Execute it and you will see the configuration window like below, choose required one, my system is block because of this i will choose first one

Set the ip informations want to assign

Now, interesting need to be remove the usb drive and go to the behind of Storwize and plug the USB there and lets see the LEDs behind flashing and stopping very funny

Pls click finish and remove the USB drive, don’t think that which port to plug, just one them

You will see that a file which name is satask.txt create when you look inside you will see the line below

satask mkcluster -clusterip 10.110.1.20 -gw 10.110.1.1 -mask 255.255.255.0

Because of V7000 do not have a Front Panel like on SVC then need to do it , but instead of COM port or such other i think its a good way to do.

Not: if you execute the tool again , do something or not , tool delete the initial file and need to reconfigure it.

if everything is okay then you will have satask_result.html file, if inside there is no error message out then everything should be okay.

try to access v7000 like https://10.110.1.20(replace it with your ip)

After login set the service ip first or use again initial utility to set it. Service mode are really useful because my v7000 is demo and i couldn’t configure v7000 with initial tool because its pre-configured and because of some error on system my all requests redirected to https://10.110.1.20/service

Default password is passw0rd

via service; you can create the cluster , change the node mode like candidate , update the firmware , re-install , collect the logs bla bla …

IBM documents is very well i just want to indicate USB Format issue and if you have demo system instead of use initial tool use service mode to create cluster and upgrade or re-install the system

Pls contact me if something wrong or you are looking other then what i wrote
VM

 

Time Config – Dell Blade Switchs

First enter to configuration mode and execute such commands (xx.yyy.zzz.ttt is your ip of ntp server)

sntp unicast client enable
sntp server xxx.yyy.zzz.ttt

to check everything pls execute command below

HEYBELIADA-M6348-A2#show sntp status

Client Mode:                       Unicast
Last Update Time:                  APR 13 11:39:14 2012

Unicast servers:
Server          Status                 Last response
————— ———————- ————————–
xxx.yyy.zzz.ttt    Success                11:38:09 Apr 13 2012

to check whole config execute command below

HEYBELIADA-M6348-A2#show sntp configuration

Polling interval: 64 seconds
MD5 Authentication keys:
Authentication is not required for synchronization.
Trusted keys:
No trusted keys.
Unicast clients: Enable

Unicast servers:
Server          Key             Polling         Priority
———       ———–     ———–     ———-
xxx.yyy.zzz.ttt    Disabled        Enabled        1

Same config is also working on M8024-k too.

VM

Dell M8024-k 10G Switch and QLogic QME8242-k 10GbE and vSphere5 and Network Performance Issue

Hi,

We have an issue about NPAR / VMWARE / QME8242-k. Issues and problems are below , we are waiting update from Dell , if we got it i will inform from this article.

• We are using QME8242-k NICs connected to PCM8024-k switch.
• When VMs are on the same host they can communicate.
• When you migrate a VM it cannot communicate with the VMs on the other hosts.
• When you make FTP or data transfer with E1000 card on VM after some minutes or seconds network card loose it self, same issue is not available on VXNET3
• When you copy something between two nodes via FTP or CIFS you will see that transfer rate is so so small KB/s

VM

centos6 & cannot change locale

issue is

Last login: Thu Mar 8 00:29:20 2012
-bash: warning: setlocale: LC_CTYPE: cannot change locale (UTF-8)

to resolve

check [root@Centos6x64-001 ~]# cat /etc/environment , it should be empty

root@Centos6x64-001 ~]# vi /etc/environment –> and add related line below , thats it

LANG=en_US.utf-8
LC_ALL=en_US.utf-8

Think twice before purchase VNX

After use more then 3 or 4 different storage vender really you can understand whats happening

EMC is leader storage vender and selling more storage from other vendors but this not means its perfect, if you are thinking to purchase think twice …

(I’m writing this article 10 March 2012 and first update 28 March 2012, if they improve something pls do not get my words AND PLS DO NOT FORGET I’M WORKING ON ISP AND INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS ARE DIFFERENT THEN ENTERPRISE CUSTOMERS )

Why !

• Block device software and File Server software are should be upgraded together, if you upgrade Block software you MUST upgrade FLARE too ! Means if Block device has a issue your have a double upgrade and 5-6 minute downtime for FileServices (Good thing EMC guys are making the upgrade maybe you can like this but its taking too much time, i can upgrade my IBM SVC Cluster in a 30 mins, thats it)
• Think again again and again when you set raid level, because later can not change it :/ why ?! because….. i don’t know, ask EMC experts, they always have something to tell about you
• If you want performance, then forget to use -Disk Pool- , because when you have problem and send nar files(Kind of debug log) to EMC Support they will say ‘The pool configuration is just used for the effective storage management, it wouldn’t benefit the storage performance.’ 
• If you will not use Disk Pool then its means ready to categories your workload and purchase more more disk then what you think before
• Try to do everything with professional service because at the end they will say ‘Suggest to engage the EMC Professional Service to reconfigure the storage.‘
• Try to get bigger controllers then what you expecting and try to purchase max cache because at the end you will start to deal with cache watermarks, if cache is low and full more quickly then host I/O will be stop for a while and this will couse delay.
• Do not believe SSD with Fast Cache, do not think that put more more SSD drive as a Fast Cache because you will wait that system will use closer %90 percent of Fast Cache SSD layer but in our environment its stay on %40-50 means for us no need it and you will get such answer from EMC guys ‘SSD drives are more efficient especially if your applications have small, random  and read weighted I/Os.’ SORRY but this words are wrong, pls check well your analyzer to determine how many cache miss you have, if its a lot then you should increase the number of SSD drive in Fast Cache, also recommendation of EMC is %5 of total storage space determine Fast Cache size.
• DeDup – NO They do not have it
• Pls do not mix the compression with dedup because you should only compress something if it will not used any more or maybe 10 years later you need it because every access time EMC should unzip it before use it this means you push the CPU , EMC do not have ASIC like 3PAR pls do not tire it
• DO NOT, but pls DO DO NOT  create a thin LUN in production , EMC say 40-50% performance degradation could be and that are preparing an update of firmware on June or closer to improve thin performance , but our contact from EMC say, do not use thin in production, its also eat memory from SP Caches
• if you have a money try to purchase more disks or if you still want to create a pool purchase SSD and put it with FC and SATA pull because EMC tearing is not working well , rule is very easy if if performance layer is empty use it , very easy decision but this is not what i want ! also chunks should be 1GB to move between layers , how much data should be stay on tier zero only 20 MB of it ?!

The world is going on another way, pls keep looking my posts, i will tell about that.

VM

RDAC ADT AVT HostType What are that ?

I decide to write this article after start to introduce DS3400 to IBM SVC

I already have DS5000 series storage before and do not have any problem to introduce SVC and no knowledge about ADT/AVT/HostTypeOptions  what a pity !

After search tens of article and page finally find out a perfect document written by Chinese from IBM, really surprised but congratulation ! You can find the link end of the article

Logical Drives, you can call it as a LUN, which hosts get it as raw space

Controller Ownership, if you are  using dual controller systems each created LUNs/Logical drives I/O assigned/shared different controllers for balance. Controller of LUN which do I/O is owner of that LUN.

AVT (Auto Volume Transfer) also referred to as the Auto Disk Transfer, its driver-level failover, its not depend controller-level.

RDAC  (Redundant Disk Array Controller), its multipathing software and provide controller redundancy, if one of controller goes down all I/O request directly forwarded to other controller. Some OS do not use RDAC for example Windows, its have own Multipathing software which generally called Native MPIO.

AVT with RDAC, AVT help that logical drive/LUN really switch or sure to secondary controller ready to handle I/O of LUN if Primary controller goes down

HostType (Linux,IBM TS SAN VCE,AIX,HP-UX)

if you want to enable or disable AVT pls use such commends from your DS Storage Manager, choose storage and from Tools menu , select execute script

Execute below is your hosttype selected Linux ;

show controller [a] HostNVSRAMBYTE [5,0x24];

You can change first digit (which is 5 in this example), pls check the pdf to find out related index numbers ” 4.3. How to enable and disable AVT “

You can see ADT option with script below

show storageSubsystem hostTypeTable;

Pls be careful upgrade times or first installation times , different series DS storages and different versions of firmwares can have different AVT option for same type of host, this is what i see on my systems .

Related Doc

http://www-03.ibm.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/5cb5ed706d254a8186256c71006d2e0a/ed9dc8b295aa3a80862577a80060240b/$FILE/ATTCUP21/IBM%20DS4000%20Auto%20Volume%20Transfer%20Usage%20with%20RDAC.pdf

Hope this article summaries many things ..

VM

VMware vSphere4/5 Cluster , FortiGate and isolation address issue

We had a problem about isolation address ping issue, somebody can say “you stupid” but i would like to create such article who can have such issue an maybe like us forgot or can imagine the problem

Short explanation, when you crate VMware vSphere4/5 cluster , default system check the isolation address which is default ESX/ESXi node/host gateway, which usually your firewall

When you install FortiGate and configure the “Administrator” settings like below (Black line indicate allowed IP address who can access FortiGate Box to manage)

 

Related picture indicate inside interface are allowed to ping

 

You can think that inside interface open for PING but don’t forget because of you activated Administrative access which was 0.0.0.0/0 (any) default and set some ip addresses which only can access to management Forti , now no any ESX/ESXi node/host can PING the their gateway and you will get an isolation error messages.

Pls add your ESX/ESXi node/host ip network in to Administrative access section , then you done !

VM

vShield Manager HA or Backup vDirector Environment

in vDirector environment you should care about vShield Manager to keep management of vShield Edge and re-deploy requirment

interesting for me because vShield Manager have an integration with vCenter to read Host&Clusters and Networks but Secured Port Groups are managed by vShield Manager. Interesting because i expect that keep vShield Manager data on vCenter database too for easy and fast restores.

Two things i will explain

1. Backup and disaster of vShield Manager
2. What you will happen or want to reinstall customers vShield Edge virtual machines.

To backup vShield Manager pls login via https://Your.vShield.Manager.IP , click Settings & Reports , Configuration Tab and Backups Tab ..

if backup top is not available then there is an issue about integration vShield Manager and vCenter , to be sure pls check related section

Backup method could be sep or ftp , pls choose which are useful for you

in my test , after backup i stopped vShield Manager VM and reinstall new vShield Manager from OVF and assigned same ip address and same admin password for vDirector do not understand something.

After all check everything normal on vDirector, pls refresh vCenter under vDirector settings

Then login vShield , you can see that for vCenter integration there is no credentials and informations there , pls write down vCenter server FQDN and credentials, then check the Host & Clusters and Networks you will see that all things pulled from vCenter but Secured Port Groups no !

Go to Backup section again and set the ftp and scp informations again and click -View Backups- button select the backup what you want to restore and thats it.

Try to add rule to vShield Edge via vDirector gui maybe you can get some error messages one time or two time but after that it will work or maybe you should wait but i did not

edge error: Firewall add Rules net:”785cfefb-08b4-4a3b-a092-e1a663376295″ (“dvportgroup-250″):on VSM:”10.110.1.91″:failed

 - HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request

Code : 70913, Description : Internal error in communication with edge. Please retry

if you have better knowledge and experience about send a comment

VM

 

 

 

Factory Reset Your Fortigate

if you need to back to configure everything from the beginning , pls do ssh to telnet to your forti and under global (do ‘config global’) execute fallowing command, thats it

 

FGT1KB3911600635 (global) # execute factoryreset

This operation will reset the system to factory default!

Do you want to continue? (y/n)y

 

VM