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Intel RAID High Availability Storage User Manual

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Intel
RAID High Availability Storage
User Guide
Order Number: G85745-001

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Summary of Contents for Intel RAID High Availability Storage

  • Page 1 ® Intel RAID High Availability Storage User Guide Order Number: G85745-001...
  • Page 2 ® Copies of documents which have an order number and are referenced in this document, or other Intel literature, may be http://www.intel.com/design/literature obtained by calling 1-800-548-4725, or go to:...

  • Page 3: Important Safety Instructions

    Server Boards and Server Chassis Safety Information at http://support.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/cs-010770.htm. Wichtige Sicherheitshinweise Lesen Sie zunächst sämtliche Warn- und Sicherheitshinweise in diesem Dokument, bevor Sie eine ® der Anweisungen ausführen. Beachten Sie hierzu auch die Sicherheitshinweise zu Intel Serverplatinen und -Servergehäusen unter http://support.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/cs-010770.htm. 重要安全指导 在执行任何指令之前，请阅读本文档中的所有注意事项及安全声明。 和/或...
  • Page 4 Turn off the server and disconnect telecommunications systems, networks, modems, and the power cord attached to the server before opening it. Otherwise, personal injury or equipment damage can happen. Intel® RAID High Availability Storage User Guide...

  • Page 5: Table Of Contents

    Troubleshooting ........................53 Reference Checklist of Required Intel® RAID High Availability Storage Components 53 Verifying Intel® RAID High Availability Storage Support in Tools and the OS Driver . 53 Confirming SAS Connections ..................55 Using Intel® RAID BIOS Console to View Connections for Controllers, Expanders, and Drives ..............

  • Page 6: Introduction

    1. Introduction ® This document explains how to set up and configure the hardware and software for the Intel RAID High Availability Storage solution. ® The Intel RAID High Availability Storage solution provides fault tolerance capabilities as a key part of a high-availability data storage system. The RAID High Availability Storage solution ®...

  • Page 7: Intel® Raid High Availability Storage Terminology

    (VDs) are managed by a single initiator. In the case of Intel® RAID High Availability Storage, I/O transactions and RAID management operations are processed by a ® single Intel RAID High Availability Storage controller, and the associated physical drives, drive ®...
  • Page 8 Full Intel RAID features, with the following exceptions.  SATA drives do not support SCSI-3 persistent reservation and are not supported in Intel® RAID High Availability Storage configurations.  SAS drives that do not support SCSI-3 persistent reservation are not supported in Intel® RAID High Availability Storage configurations.

  • Page 9: Hardware And Software Setup

    Figure 1 Locating RAID Premium Feature Key connector on Intel® RAID Controller RS25DB080 3. With the 3-hole edge of the Intel® RAID Premium Feature key pointing to the RAID Premium Feature Key 2-pin connector of the RAID controller, push the key onto the connector on the RAID controller.

  • Page 10: Installing Intel Raid High Availability Storage Hardware

    ® Intel RAID High Availability Storage controllers can discover both SAS addresses for all of the drives. For an Intel® RAID High Availability Storage configuration, the expander must have two four-lane In ports. The expander also requires many disk ports assigned according to the cable and backplane ®...

  • Page 11: Setting Up A Cluster-In-A-Box Configuration

    ® Figure 3 Intel RAID High Availability Storage Expander Configuration Note: Drive enclosures with dual ESM modules can support split modes or unified modes. For fault- tolerant cabling configurations, you typically configure the enclosure in unified mode. (Check with your drive enclosure vendor to determine the appropriate settings).
  • Page 12 The cluster-in-a-box configuration for the Intel RAID High Availability Storage solution requires a ® specially designed server and storage chassis that includes two Intel RAID High Availability Storage controllers and multiple SAS disks. Because all components are inside the enclosure and are pre- connected, the physical setup is minimal.

  • Page 13: Setting Up A Two-Server Configuration With External Jbod Configuration

    RAID High Availability Storage solution enables you to configure two separate, standard ® servers with Intel RAID High Availability Storage controllers that provide access to disks in the same JBOD enclosure, or enclosures, for reliable, high-access redundancy, as shown in the following figure. ®...
  • Page 14 RAID High Availability Storage solution is based on Intel RAID firmware that is Intel® RAID High Availability Storage capable. Other versions of Intel RAID firmware do not provide clustering support. When the second node boots, firmware version checks occur between the two controllers, and the second node presents POST error messages if the Intel®...
  • Page 15 ® Figure 7 Two-Server Intel RAID High Availability Storage Configuration Follow these steps to set up the hardware for a dual-server-JBOD configuration for Intel® RAID High Availability Storage clustering. ® 1. Install an Intel RAID High Availability Storage controller board in each of the two server modules, following the instructions in the Quick Installation Guide.

  • Page 16: Cabling Configurations

    5. Connect power cords to the server units and the JBOD enclosure and power the units. Cabling Configurations ® This section contains information about initially setting up a Intel RAID High Availability Storage configuration with one or two JBODs. It also explains how to add a second JBOD to a single-JBOD configuration without interrupting service on the configuration.
  • Page 17 Continued access to drives is assured in the event of a complete drive enclosure failure or removal.  Additional expansion drive enclosures can be hot-added without disrupting service, as shown in Figure 9. The following figure shows an incorrectly cabled configuration with two disk enclosures. ® Intel High Availability Storage User Guide...
  • Page 18 3. The failure of drive enclosure A results in disconnection of drive enclosure B from both servers. The following figure shows how to add a second disk enclosure to an existing two-server cluster without interrupting service on the HA configuration. ® Intel High Availability Storage User Guide...
  • Page 19 3. Disconnect the link from port 0 on ESM A of drive enclosure A and reconnect it to port 0 on ESM A of drive enclosure B. 4. Connect the link from port 2 on ESM A of drive enclosure B to port 0 on ESM A of drive enclosure A. ® Intel High Availability Storage User Guide...

  • Page 20: Installing Intel Raid High Availability Storage Software

    (Optional) An SMI-S provider that supports the Intel RAID High Availability Storage solution See Section - Verifying Intel® RAID High Availability Storage Support in Tools and the OS Driver, to learn how to verify that you have the correct version of the tools and driver.

  • Page 21: Installing The Intel Raid Driver

    Installing the Intel RAID Driver ® The Intel RAID High Availability Storage controllers use a driver that is also used by the Intel RAID ® SAS products. Install the driver or update it to the version that supports the Intel RAID High Availability Storage controller.

  • Page 22: Creating The Intel Raid High Availability Storage Configuration

    RAID High Availability Storage Configuration ® This chapter explains how to set up Intel® RAID High Availability Storage clustering on a Intel RAID High Availability Storage cluster-in-a-box configuration or a two-server configuration after the hardware is fully configured and the operating system is installed.
  • Page 23 The following figure shows, on the left, the controller dashboard with Inactive cluster status. The dashboard on the right side of the figure shows the change to Active cluster status. Figure 12 Controller Dashboard: Inactive and Active Cluster Status ® Intel High Availability Storage User Guide...

  • Page 24: Creating Virtual Drives On The Controller Nodes

    High Availability Storage configuration must be shared. If you do not designate them as shared, the VDs are visible only from the controller node on which they were created. You can use the Intel® RAID BIOS Console pre-boot utility to create the VDs. You can also use the ®...
  • Page 25 Figure 13 Intel® RAID BIOS Console Main Page The first Configuration Wizard window appears. 4. Select Add Configuration and click Next. 5. On the next wizard screen, select Manual Configuration and click Next. The Drive Group Definition window appears. 6. In the Drives panel on the left, select the first drive, then hold down the Ctrl key and select more drives for the array, as shown in the following figure.
  • Page 26 8. On the next screen, click Add to SPAN, then click Next. 9. On the next screen, click Update Size. 10. Select the Share Virtual Drive option on the bottom left of the window, as shown in the following figure. ® Intel High Availability Storage User Guide...
  • Page 27 ® NOTE: The Intel RAID High Availability Storage solution supports global hot spares and dedicated hot spares. Global hot spares are global for the cluster, not for a controller. 17. When all VDs are configured, reboot both systems as a cluster.

  • Page 28: Creating Shared Vds With Cmdtool264.Exe On Windows Server 2012

    Administrator from the pop-up menu, as shown in the following figure. Figure 16 Starting PowerShell 2. At the PowerShell prompt, enter the command cd \intel\cli to change to the CmdTool2 directory. 3. At the PowerShell prompt, run the following command: .\CmdTool264 "–cfgdsply –a0"...
  • Page 29 .\CmdTool264 "–cfgldadd –r5[20:1,20:2,20:3,20:4,20:5] WB RA direct –strpsz64 –a0" The following notes explain the command line parameters.  The –cfgldadd parameter configures and adds a VD (logical disk).  The -r5 parameter selects RAID 5 as the RAID level. ® Intel High Availability Storage User Guide...
  • Page 30  The -a0 parameter selects the first Intel RAID High Availability Storage controller in the system.  The Intel® RAID High Availability Storage version of CmdTool2 creates, by default, a shared VD that is visible to all cluster nodes. NOTE: To create a VD that is visible only to the node that created it (such as creating a boot volume for this cluster node), add the -exclusive parameter to the command line.
  • Page 31 The following button appears at the bottom of the desktop to open the command prompt as Administrator. Figure 21 Run as Administrator Button Click the button to open a command prompt, as shown in the following figure. ® Intel High Availability Storage User Guide...
  • Page 32 The -a0 parameter presumes that there is only one Intel RAID High Availability Storage controller ® in the system or that these steps reference the first Intel RAID High Availability Storage controller in a system with multiple controllers. The following figure shows some sample configuration information that appears in response to the command.
  • Page 33  The -a0 parameter selects the first Intel RAID High Availability Storage controller in the system.  The Intel® RAID High Availability Storage version of CmdTool2 creates, by default, a shared VD that is visible to all cluster nodes. NOTE: To create a VD that is visible only to the node that created it (such as creating a boot volume for this cluster node), add the -exclusive parameter to the command line.

  • Page 34: Creating Shared Vds With Rwc2

    NOTE: Not all versions of RWC2 support Intel® RAID High Availability Storage. Check the release notes to determine if your version of RWC2 supports Intel® RAID High Availability Storage. Also, see Section - Verifying Intel® RAID High Availability Storage Support in Tools and the OS Driver.
  • Page 35 The new VD appears in the Drive groups window on the right of the window. 10. Click Next to continue. The Create Virtual Drive Summary window appears, as shown in the following figure. ® Intel High Availability Storage User Guide...
  • Page 36 ® Drives that are used in the Intel RAID High Availability Storage solution must have Intel® RAID High Availability Storage-compatible implementations of the SCSI-3 persistent reservation (PR) feature. Intel maintains a list of drives that meet this requirement. If the RAID Web Console 2 (RWC2) utility finds a drive that does not support the PR feature, it marks the drive as Unsupported, as shown in the following figure.

  • Page 37: Intel® Raid High Availability Storage Ssd Cache Support

    The Intel RAID High Availability Storage solution requires the use of SAS SSDs that support SCSI-3 persistent reservations (PR) for SSD Cache VDs. Intel maintains a list of SAS SSD drives that meet the Intel® RAID High Availability Storage requirements.
  • Page 38 The maximum allowable size for the SSD Cache volume is 512 GB. To achieve optimal read cache performance, the recommended best practice is to make the size as large as possible with the available SSDs, up to this limit. ® Intel High Availability Storage User Guide...
  • Page 39 Figure 30 Creating SSD Cache Drive Group 2 5. Click Create Virtual Drive and then click Next. 6. In the Create SSD Cache SSD Caching Summary window, review the configuration and then click Finish. ® Intel High Availability Storage User Guide...
  • Page 40 7. In the Create SSD Cache Complete box, click OK. The CacheCache VD now appears on the Physical Tab of RWC2, as shown in the following figure. The SSD Cache volume association with the drive groups appears in this view. ® Intel High Availability Storage User Guide...
  • Page 41 Figure 32 New SSD Cache Drive Group ® Intel High Availability Storage User Guide...

  • Page 42: System Administration

    Figure 33 Controller Properties: High Availability Properties A description of each high availability property follows: ®  Topology Type – A descriptor of the HA topology for which the Intel RAID High Availability Storage controller is currently configured (the default is Server Storage Cluster). ®...

  • Page 43: Understanding Failover Operations

    Understanding Failover Operations A failover operation in Intel® RAID High Availability Storage is the process by which VD management transitions from one server/controller node to the peer server/controller node. A failover operation might result from a user-initiated (planned) actions to move an application to a different controller node so that maintenance activities can be performed, or the failover might be unintended (unplanned), resulting from hardware or software component failure that blocks access to the storage devices.
  • Page 44 After failover, the operating system perspective of I/O transactions is as follows:  Failover Cluster Manager has moved the I/O transactions for VD2 on A-DG0 to Server B.  Server B continues to run I/O transactions on B-DG0:VD3. ® Intel High Availability Storage User Guide...

  • Page 45: Understanding And Using Planned Failover

    Do not transition operating system boot volumes from EXCLUSIVE to SHARED. Planned Failover in Windows Server 2012 ® Follow these steps to perform a planned failover on a Intel RAID High Availability Storage system running Windows Server 2012. ®...
  • Page 46 4. Right-click the entry in the Assigned To column in the center panel of the window. A pop-up menu appears. 5. In the pop-up menu, select Move > Select Node, as shown in the following figure. ® Intel High Availability Storage User Guide...

  • Page 47: Understanding Unplanned Failover

    An unplanned failover might occur if the controller in one of the controller nodes fails, or if the cable ® from one controller node to the JBOD is accidentally disconnected. The Intel RAID High Availability Storage solution is designed to automatically switch to the other controller node when such an event occurs, without any disruption of access to the data on the drive groups.

  • Page 48: Updating The Intel Raid Driver

    11. Restore the cluster to its non-failed-over mode. Updating the Intel RAID Driver To update the Intel RAID driver used in the clustering configuration, download the latest version of the driver from the Intel website http://www.intel.com . Then follow these instructions for Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012.
  • Page 49 4. Click Storage to expose the Intel RAID High Availability Storage controller. ® 5. Right-click the Intel RAID High Availability Storage controller and select Update Driver Software to start the Driver Update wizard, as shown in the following figure. ® Intel...

  • Page 50: Updating The Driver In Windows Server 2012

    These steps are recommended because a driver update requires a reboot of the system. 1. Run Server Manager and select Local Server on the left panel. 2. Click the Tasks selection list on the right-hand side of the window, as shown in the following figure. ® Intel High Availability Storage User Guide...
  • Page 51 Figure 41 Updating the Driver Software 3. Select Computer Management, then click Device Manager. ® 4. Click Storage to expose the Intel RAID High Availability Storage controller, as shown in the following figure. ® Intel High Availability Storage User Guide...

  • Page 52: Performing Preventative Measures On Disk Drives And Vds

    Figure 42 Updating the Driver Software ® 5. Right-click the Intel RAID High Availability Storage controller and select Update Driver Software to start the Driver Update wizard. 6. Follow the instructions in the wizard. Performing Preventative Measures on Disk Drives and VDs The following drive and VD-level operations help to proactively detect disk drive and VD errors that could potentially cause the failure of a controller node.

  • Page 53: Troubleshooting

    Not all versions of RWC2 support Intel® RAID High Availability Storage. The RWC2 versions that include support for Intel® RAID High Availability Storage have specific references to clustering. It is not always possible to determine the level of support from the RWC2 version number. Instead, look for the RWC2 user interface features that indicate clustering support.
  • Page 54 Figure 43 Share Virtual Drive Property Intel® RAID High Availability Storage versions of RWC2 also require an Intel® RAID High Availability Storage-capable OS driver to present Intel® RAID High Availability Storage features. The in-box driver for Windows Server 2012, version 5.2.122.0 4/3/2012 does not present Intel® RAID High Availability Storage features in RWC2.

  • Page 55: Confirming Sas Connections

    RAID High Availability Storage system. As shown in the following figure, if both expanders are running, the view in Intel® RAID BIOS Console from one of the nodes includes the other Intel® RAID High Availability Storage RAID controller (Processor 8 in the figure), the two expanders, and any drives, as shown in the following figure.
  • Page 56 Figure 45 Redundant SAS Data Paths Are Missing The following figure shows the correct view with two drive SAS addresses. ® Intel High Availability Storage User Guide...

  • Page 57: Using Cmdtool2 To Verify Dual-Ported Sas Addresses To Disk Drives

    The dual SAS addresses are listed at the end. Physical Disk: 0 Enclosure Device ID: 65 Slot Number: 1 Drive's postion: DiskGroup: 0, Span: 0, Arm: 0 Enclosure position: 0 ® Intel High Availability Storage User Guide...

  • Page 58: Using Rwc2 To Verify Dual-Ported Sas Addresses To Disk Drives

    When the Intel RAID High Availability Storage system is running, you can use RWC2 to verify the dual SAS paths to disk drives in the Intel® RAID High Availability Storage configuration by following these steps: 1. Start RWC2 and access the Physical tab for the controller.

  • Page 59: Understanding Ssd Cache Behavior During A Failover

    SSD Cache VD on the peer controller node. Error Situations and Solutions ® The following table lists problems that you might encounter in a Intel RAID High Availability Storage configuration, along with possible causes and solutions. The highlighted entry is especially important;...
  • Page 60 HA options and compatible. application from the Intel web properties. site, or contact an Intel support representative. Drives are not reported in a Improper connections might Make sure you are following the consistent manner.

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