Dell PowerVault MD3000 Manuel technique

Dell™ PowerVault™

MD3000 Systems

Information Update

Notes, Cautions, and Warnings

NOTE: A NOTE indicates important information that helps you make better use of

your computer.

CAUTION: A CAUTION indicates potential damage to hardware or loss of data if

instructions are not followed.

WARNING: A WARNING indicates a potential for property damage, personal

injury, or death.

____________________

Information in this document is subject to change without notice.

Reproduction of these materials in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of Dell Inc.

is strictly forbidden.

Trademarks used in this text: Dell, the DELL logo, and PowerVault are trademarks of Dell Inc.;

Microsoft, Windows, and Windows Server are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft

Corporation in the United States and/or other countries; SUSE is a registered trademark of Novell, Inc.,

in the United States and other countries; Red Hat and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are registered

trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming

the marks and names or their products. Dell Inc. disclaims any proprietary interest in trademarks and

trade names other than its own.

September 2009 Rev. A02

Contents 3

Contents

Determining Your Firmware Version . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Important Information Before Upgrading Your

Firmware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Performance Affected after Upgrading to Second

Generation Firmware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Virtual Disk Copy Operation on SATA Disks . . . . . . . 6

Load Balancing in Microsoft Windows Server 2008 . . . 6

Installing Linux Operating System. . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Battery Learn Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Creating Host to Virtual Disk Mappings. . . . . . . . . . 7

Additional Disk Group and Virtual Disk Expansion

Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Storage Manager for SANs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Unable to Assign LUNs to Windows 2008

Server. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Array Password Reset Using Microsoft Windows

Server 2008. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Modular Disk Storage Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Physical Disk Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

RAID Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Change Disk Group RAID Level. . . . . . . . . . . . 9

RAID Level Migration Requirements . . . . . . . . 10

4Contents

Under-Reported Disk Capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Configuration File Write Error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Limitations of NTFS-Formatted Disks . . . . . . . . . . 11

Password Reset Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Updates to the MD3000 Documentation . . . . . . . . . 12

Hardware Owner’s Manual . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Command Line Interface Guide. . . . . . . . . . . 12

Installation Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Information Update 5

Determining Your Firmware Version

To determine if your software is first generation or second generation,

perform the following steps:

Connect to the system using the Dell™ PowerVault™ MD Storage

Manager.

Select the

Support

tab.

Click

Storage Array Profile

Note the firmware version:

If it is 06.xx.xx.xx, it is first generation.

If it is 07.xx.xx.xx, it is second generation.

Important Information Before Upgrading Your

Firmware

Prior to performing the firmware upgrade, perform a complete backup of the

data, and use the Gather Support Information tool to save the system

configuration. This recommendation applies whenever you make changes to

your configuration.

Performance Affected after Upgrading to Second

Generation Firmware

After upgrading to second generation firmware, you may experience a

temporary performance impact. This impact is caused by the second

generation firmware, which adds smart-battery functionality to the MD3000.

In order to accurately measure battery parameters, the batteries are taken

through a “learn cycle” and the system’s write cache is disabled for the

duration of the learn cycle. The first learn cycle starts soon after the firmware

upgrade is completed and takes around 15 hours to complete. During this

time, you may experience a temporary performance slowdown for certain

kinds of file operations as the write cache is disabled. Once the learn cycle is

complete, the write cache is automatically enabled.

Future learn cycles are scheduled for every 13 weeks. You can adjust the day

and time of the day of future learn cycles using MD Storage Manager

(click Tools and select Change Battery Settings).

6Information Update

Virtual Disk Copy Operation on SATA Disks

A virtual disk copy operation may take much longer when a new copy is

created on SATA disks. To improve the performance, first create the virtual

disk. After the virtual disk is initialized, start the virtual disk copy operation.

Load Balancing in Microsoft Windows Server

2008

Load balancing in Microsoft®Windows Server®2008 is provided by the

MPIO driver under the MPIO tab. For information about accessing the

MPIO tab, see the Installation Guide at support.dell.com/manuals. The

following options are supported by MD3000:

• Least Path Weight

• Least Queue Depth

Installing Linux Operating System

During a Linux operating system installation, the installer lists all the

volumes that are discovered from MD3000, including virtual disks that are

mapped to the host and Universal Xport. If the operating system needs to be

installed on an MD3000 virtual disk, you must ensure that you select the

appropriate virtual disk. The array does not respond if you select the Universal

Xport disk(s) for installation.

Battery Learn Cycle

In second generation firmware systems, the cache offload battery undergoes a

learn cycle once in every 13 weeks to ensure that the battery is in a good state.

The learn cycle performs a complete discharge of the battery followed by a

complete recharge. During this cycle, the system cache is disabled on all

virtual disks in the system. There may be a temporary impact on the

performance of the system when the battery undergoes a learn cycle. A learn

cycle takes place under the following situations:

• First time upgrade from first generation firmware to second generation

firmware

• Once in every 13 weeks

Information Update 7

The next scheduled learn cycle can be seen under Tools→Change Battery

Settings in the MD Storage Manager. The learn cycle can be postponed by up

to seven days at a time through the GUI. You can also use the following SMcli

command to postpone a learn cycle: set storageArray

learnCycleDate daysToNextLearnCycle=[x]

For more information, see the Command Line Interface Guide at

support.dell.com/manuals.

Creating Host to Virtual Disk Mappings

You can create Host-to-Virtual Disk mappings to a host group or to a single

host. If you have created the mapping to a host that is part of a host group,

the mapped host alone will have access to the virtual disk.

Additional Disk Group and Virtual Disk Expansion

Information

To expand disks groups or virtual disks, you can use the MD Storage Manager

or the command line interface. It is only possible to add one disk at a time or

two in the case of RAID10 to expand the disk group.

To expand the virtual disk using the command line interface, type: set

virtualDisk [VDname] addCapacity=sizetobeadded

For more information, see the Command Line Interface Guide at

support.dell.com/manuals.

During disk group and virtual disk expansion operations, you have complete

access to the virtual disks and disk group redundancy is maintained at all

times. The impact on the performance is minimal during the operation.

For more information, see the User's Guide at support.dell.com/manuals.

8Information Update

Storage Manager for SANs

Unable to Assign LUNs to Windows 2008 Server

The Windows Server 2008 Storage Manager for SANs utility can be used to

create and manage virtual disks in the MD3000 from the host server. If the

host server contains SAS 5/i HBAs, the SAS 5/i ports must be disabled in the

Storage Manager for SANs utility to prevent issues with assigning virtual disks

(LUNs) to the host server.

Perform the following steps:

Click

LUN Management

Click

Manage Server Connection

Select the host server

In the

Fiber Channel Ports

tab, disable all the SAS 5/i ports and leave the

SAS 5/e ports enabled.

There are 8 SAS 5/i ports per SAS 5/i HBA in the host server. The HBA Port

WWN has the following format: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:00 to

xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:07.

NOTE: SAS 5/e HBAs have two ports with HBA Port WWN as follows:

yy:yy:yy:yy:yy:yy:yy:00 and yy:yy:yy:yy:yy:yy:yy:04

Array Password Reset Using Microsoft

Windows Server 2008

To reset a lost or forgotten password on an MD3000 array, a command must

be issued via the serial port on either controller in the array to clear the

existing password. This task is accomplished through COM port connection

from a server, workstation or laptop to a controller on the MD3000 array.

On most Windows operating systems, the HyperTerminal application is used

to establish the COM port connection to the serial port on the controller.

However, HyperTerminal is not available on Windows Server 2008 systems.

Information Update 9

Complete the following steps to reset the password to an MD3000 array if

your system is running the Windows Server 2008 operating system:

Obtain a terminal application capable of COM port connections.

Configure the application to use the communication settings as described

on page 23 of the

Dell PowerVault Modular Disk Storage Manager User’s

Guide

Proceed with the password reset procedure described on page 24 of the

User’s Guide

Modular Disk Storage Manager

The following updates apply to the Modular Disk Storage Manager

(MD Storage Manager):

•

When the MD Storage Manager is installed on

Red Hat

Enterprise

Linux

systems or

SUSE

Linux Enterprise Servers

or when the

MD Storage Manager is running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Servers,

Japanese and Simplified Chinese are not supported.

Physical Disk Migration

Cold power-up migration of

physical disk

s from one MD3000 duplex

configuration to another MD3000 duplex configuration is supported only

when all

physical disk

s are moved from one system to another. No other

migrations, including partial

physical disk

migration and RAID controller

module migration, are supported.

RAID Level

Change Disk Group RAID Level

Follow these instructions to change the RAID level of a disk group as needed:

In MD Storage Manager, click the

Modify

tab and click

Change Disk

Group RAID Level

Select the disk group that you want to modify.

Select the new RAID level from the drop-down menu.

Click

Change

to start the process.

10 Information Update

NOTE: Dell recommends backing up the disk group before modifying the

RAID level.

NOTE: The number of disks in the disk group should meet its RAID level criteria.

RAID1 and RAID10 require an even number of disks. On the MD3000, RAID 5

requires a minimum of 3 disks and RAID 6 requires a minimum of 5 disks. You may

need to add free capacity to the disk group before changing the RAID level.

RAID Level Migration Requirements

Successful RAID Level Migration (RLM) requires that the appropriate

number of

physical disk

s are present in your disk group. To perform RLM

from a RAID 1 or RAID 10 to an odd-number of physical disks (five or more)

in RAID 5, first add an even number of disks to the RAID 1 or RAID 10,

convert to RAID 5, then add another physical disk to make the count odd.

Under-Reported Disk Capacity

The unit Gigabyte (GB) is often used to refer to calculation of both 109bytes

and 230 bytes. The MD Storage Manager calculates hard disk capacity in GB

using 230 bytes as compared to 109that is used by hard disk manufacturers,

and therefore displays a smaller capacity than reported by the hard drive

vendor. There is no actual loss of available data capacity, and the MD3000

only reserves 512 MB (106) of space per hard disk for meta-data usage.

Configuration File Write Error

Using the MD Storage Manager with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 or

Microsoft Windows Vista can result in a Configuration File Write

Error. The MD Storage Manager will be unable to save any changes to the

configuration files. This error is seen when the application is run as a user

without Local Administrator privileges. MD Storage Manager requires Local

Administrator privileges for full functionality.

Workaround: This error can be bypassed by running the MD Storage

Manager with local administrator privileges. This can be set by right-clicking

the shortcut and clicking Run as Administrator. This setting can be made

permanent by modifying the shortcut properties and enabling Always run as

administrator.

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