HP P2000 G3 MSA Technical White Paper
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HP P2000 G3 MSA Technical White Paper

Hp storage modular smart array
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Technical white paper
HP P2000 G3 MSA
Best practices

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About this document ............................................................................................................................................................ 3
Intended audience ................................................................................................................................................................. 3
Prerequisites .......................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Related documentation ........................................................................................................................................................ 3
The P2000 G3 MSA ............................................................................................................................................................... 3
Topics covered ................................................................................................................................................................... 3
What's new in the P2000 G3 MSA ................................................................................................................................... 4
Hardware overview ........................................................................................................................................................... 4
Unified LUN Presentation ................................................................................................................................................. 5
Choosing single or dual controllers ................................................................................................................................ 7
Choosing DAS or SAN attach ............................................................................................................................................ 8
Dealing with controller failovers ..................................................................................................................................... 8
Virtual disks ..................................................................................................................................................................... 11
Virtual Disk Expansion Best Practices ......................................................................................................................... 14
Vdisk Expansion Capability for Supported RAID Levels............................................................................................. 14
Vdisk Expansion ............................................................................................................................................................. 14
Vdisk Expansion Recommendations ........................................................................................................................... 15
Allocate "quiet" period(s) to help optimize Vdisk expansion .................................................................................... 15
Re-create the Vdisk with additional capacity and restore data ............................................................................... 15
Volume mapping ............................................................................................................................................................ 16
RAID levels ...................................................................................................................................................................... 16
Cache configuration ....................................................................................................................................................... 17
World Wide Name naming conventions ...................................................................................................................... 19
Fastest throughput optimization ................................................................................................................................. 21
Highest fault tolerance optimization ........................................................................................................................... 21
Boot from storage considerations ............................................................................................................................... 21
Disk Background Scrub, Drive Spin Down, and SMART ............................................................................................. 21
Cascading Array Enclosures .......................................................................................................................................... 23
8 Gb Switches and SFP transceivers ............................................................................................................................ 24
MSA70 considerations ................................................................................................................................................... 24
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Summary of Contents for HP P2000 G3 MSA

  • Page 1: Table Of Contents

    Prerequisites ..................................3 Related documentation ................................ 3 The P2000 G3 MSA ................................3 Topics covered ................................... 3 What’s new in the P2000 G3 MSA ........................... 4 Hardware overview ................................4 Unified LUN Presentation ..............................5 Choosing single or dual controllers ..........................7 Choosing DAS or SAN attach ............................
  • Page 2 Technical white paper | HP P2000 G3 MSA Administering with HP SMU ............................25 P2000 G3 iSCSI MSA considerations ..........................25 Using optic cables ................................26 Software ....................................26 Versions ................................... 26 Host Server Software ..............................27 Best Practices for Firmware Updates ..........................28 General P2000/MSA2000 Device Firmware Update Best Practices ................

  • Page 3: About This Document

    About this document This white paper highlights the best practices for optimizing the HP P2000 G3 MSA, and should be used in conjunction with other HP Storage Modular Smart Array manuals. Modular Smart Array (MSA) technical user documentations can be found at hp.com/go/P2000...

  • Page 4: What's New In The P2000 G3 Msa

    The P2000 G3 FC is an 8 Gb Fibre Channel, while the P2000 G3 SAS is a 6 Gb SAS connected 2U storage area network (SAN) or direct connect solution (OS dependent) designed for small to medium-sized departments or remote locations.

  • Page 5: Unified Lun Presentation

    (also available over FC). The P2000 G3 SAS is the follow-on product to the MSA2000sa G2, adding the latest 6 Gb SAS technology to the four host ports per controller. The P2000 G3 SAS array is designed for directly attaching up to four dual-path or eight single path rack servers.
  • Page 6 Technical white paper | HP P2000 G3 MSA Shared LUN number between controllers with a maximum of 512 LUNs No duplicate LUNs allowed between controllers • Either controller can use any unused logical unit number • ULP recognizes which paths are “preferred”...

  • Page 7: Choosing Single Or Dual Controllers

    A single-controller configuration is also an appropriate choice in storage systems where redundancy is achieved at a higher level, such as a two-node cluster. For example, a two-node cluster where each node is attached to a P2000 G3 FC with a single controller and the nodes do not depend upon shared storage. In this case, the failure of a controller is...

  • Page 8: Choosing Das Or San Attach

    Dealing with controller failovers Since the P2000 G3 uses Unified LUN Presentation, all host ports see all LUNs; thus failovers are dealt with differently than with the MSA2000 G1 (excluding the MSA2000sa G1). FC direct-attach configurations In a dual-controller system, both controllers share a unique node WWN so they appear as a single device to hosts.
  • Page 9 Technical white paper | HP P2000 G3 MSA Note 1 Ownership of volumes is not visible to hosts. However, in SMU you can view volume ownership and change the owner of a virtual disk and its volumes. Note 2 Changing the ownership of a virtual disk should never be done with I/O in progress. I/O should be quiesced prior to changing ownership.
  • Page 10 Technical white paper | HP P2000 G3 MSA Figure 4. FC storage presentation during failover (high-availability, dual-controller, and direct attach with two hosts) In the following configuration, each host has a non-redundant connection to all mapped volumes. If a controller fails, the hosts connected to the surviving controller maintain access to all volumes owned by that controller.

  • Page 11: Virtual Disks

    SATA drives in a virtual disk. The system displays an error message if you choose drives that are not of the same type. The HP P2000 G3 system can have a maximum of 16 virtual disks per controller in a dual controller system for a total of 32 virtual disks.
  • Page 12 Technical white paper | HP P2000 G3 MSA Supporting large storage capacities requires advanced planning because it requires using large virtual disks with several volumes each or many virtual disks. To increase capacity and drive usage (but not performance), you can create virtual disks larger than 2 TB and divide them into multiple volumes with a capacity of 2 TB or less.
  • Page 13 Vdisk, but the initialization takes less time. To assign the advanced user type to the manage user, log into the HP Storage Management Utility (SMU) and make sure the P2000 G3 on the left frame is highlighted and then click the Configuration drop-down box. Then click Users → Modify User.

  • Page 14: Virtual Disk Expansion Best Practices

    With the ever changing storage needs seen in the world today, there comes a time when storage space gets exhausted quickly. The P2000 G3 MSA gives you the option to grow the size of a LUN to keep up with your dynamic storage needs.

  • Page 15: Vdisk Expansion Recommendations

    Backup the current data from the existing Vdisk. Shutdown all hosts connected to the P2000 G3 system. Label and disconnect host side cables from the P2000 G3 system. Using the WBI or CLI, start the Vdisk expansion. Monitor the Vdisk expansion percentage complete.

  • Page 16: Volume Mapping

    For fault tolerance, HP recommends mapping the volumes to all available ports on the controller. For performance, HP recommends mapping the volumes to the ports on the controller that owns the Vdisk. Mapping to the non-preferred path results in a slight performance degradation.

  • Page 17: Cache Configuration

    To change the following cache settings, the user—who logs into the HP SMU—must have the “advanced” user credential. The manage user has the “standard” user credential by default. This credential can be changed using the HP SMU and click on “Configuration,” then “Users,” then “Modify Users.”...
  • Page 18 To make sure that this occurs and that the system doesn’t operate in write-through mode longer than necessary, make sure you check the setting in HP SMU or the CLI. You can specify actions for the system to take when write-through caching is triggered: Revert when Trigger Condition Clears: Switches back to write-back caching after the trigger condition is cleared.

  • Page 19: World Wide Name Naming Conventions

    World Wide Name naming conventions A best practice for acquiring and renaming World Wide Names (WWN) for the P2000 G3 MSA is to plug-in one cable connection at a time and then rename the WWN to an identifiable name.
  • Page 20 Technical white paper | HP P2000 G3 MSA Highlight the host in the list that you want to rename by clicking the WWN name. On the right window frame, click Provisioning -> Rename Host. Type in the host nickname and choose the Profile and then click Modify Name. Click OK on the pop-up window.

  • Page 21: Fastest Throughput Optimization

    Technical white paper | HP P2000 G3 MSA Plug in the SAS port of the HBA on the second server into the P2000 G3 SAS MSA controller port. Make sure the server is powered on. Repeat steps 3–5 for the remaining servers.
  • Page 22 Technical white paper | HP P2000 G3 MSA You can use a Vdisk while it is being scrubbed. Background Vdisk scrub runs at background utility priority, which reduces to no activity if CPU usage is above a certain percentage or if I/O is occurring on the Vdisk being scrubbed. A Vdisk scrub may be in process on multiple Vdisks at once.

  • Page 23: Cascading Array Enclosures

    Cascading Array Enclosures Since the P2000 G3 MSA can be upgraded from any MSA2000 G1/G2 model, the existing MSA70s and MSA2000 expansion array enclosures might hold data that you need. The MSA70 and MSA2000 expansion enclosures operate at 3 Gb, see the Figures 7 and 8.

  • Page 24: Gb Switches And Sfp Transceivers

    The 8 Gb switches that HP offers use differing models of Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP) transceivers. The correct SFPs must be loaded into the correct supported 8 Gb switches when connecting to the P2000 G3 FC MSA. If the wrong SFPs are used in an unsupported 8 Gb switch, the storage on the P2000 G3 FC MSA will not be visible.

  • Page 25: Administering With Hp Smu

    P2000 G3 iSCSI MSA considerations When using the P2000 FC/iSCSI combo G3 MSA (for iSCSI traffic), P2000 G3 10GbE iSCSI MSA, or P2000 G3 iSCSI MSA, it is a best practice to use at least three network ports per server, two for the storage (Private) LAN and one or more for the Public LAN(s).

  • Page 26: Using Optic Cables

    • Controller B port 1: 10.11.10.1 30 • Note In the case of the P2000 G3 iSCSI MSA, set up the scheme similar to the following example (with a netmask of 255.255.255.0): Controller A port 0: 10.10.10.100 • Controller A port 1: 10.11.10.120 •...

  • Page 27: Host Server Software

    2008, and for each of the supported hardware architectures (x86, x64, and IA64). Bundles include installable Smart Components and the HP SUM engine. The HP SUM engine will have “pull from Web updates,” so users can get the latest from Web automatically.

  • Page 28: Best Practices For Firmware Updates

    • performed. P2000/MSA2000 Disk Drive Firmware Update Best Practices Disk drive upgrades on the HP P2000/MSA2000 storage systems is an off line process. All host and array I/O must be • stopped prior to the upgrade. If the drive is in a virtual disk, verify that it is not being initialized, expanded, reconstructed, verified, or scrubbed. If any of •...

  • Page 29: Summary

    © Copyright 2010, 2011, 2013 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty.

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