Hosts (mysteriously) "propagating" into EMC Clariion Storage Groups

Hi,

As I've posted in the last several weeks, I've been working with an EMC
CX700 recently, and I think that I have somewhat gotten the basics down,
but I've encountered something rather strange (to me anyway).

We have 6 servers in a test environment, all with dual-port QLogic
HBAs. Right now, for testing, I only have one port from each HBA to the
EMC/MCData FC switch. From the FC switch, there's one connection to
each of the SPs on the CX700 (SPA and SPB).

I setup a zone on the FC switch consisting of just the server HBA port
and one port on SPB (i.e., I set up 6 zones).

In Navisphere, I created 6 RAID groups, and 6 LUNs, then I created 6
Storage Groups, and moved one LUN to each Storage Groups (ServerGroup1,
ServerGroup2, ..., ServerGroup6). Finally, in Connectivity Status, I
created 6 hosts (Host1,...,Host6), and moved each host into one of the
Storage Groups (e.g., I moved Host1 into ServerGroup1, etc.).

Everything seemed to be working, and so I haven't been using Navisphere
for a few days, but then yesterday, I noticed that I had a problem
accessing the SAN from one of the servers. When I went into Navisphere,
I was really surprised to see that in all of the Storage Groups, the
host that Navisphere was showing was Host1.

In other words, now, instead of Host2 being in ServerGroup2, Navisphere
is showing Host1. Ditto for ServerGroup3 through ServerGroup6.

During this period, nothing hardware-wise has changed, i.e., we didn't
move any cables or HBAs or anything, so I'm really puzzled about why
this is happening.

Has anyone had something like this happen before?

Thanks,
Jim

Hi,

I was thinking about this problem some more today, and I just realized
that when we've been 'registering' hosts in Navisphere, we've been
putting in the host name and IP address in the dialog. However, I just
realized that we have been using the SAME dummy IP address for each of
the hosts that we've registered in Navisphere.

Is it possible that this (having the same IP address associated with
each host in Navisphere) is confusing Navisphere? Per earlier posts in
the thread "Configuring Boot from SAN (Emulex/EMC/Win2K), I thought it
didn't matter what IP address we used???

Thanks,
Jim




ohaya wrote:

Hi,

As I've posted in the last several weeks, I've been working with an EMC
CX700 recently, and I think that I have somewhat gotten the basics down,
but I've encountered something rather strange (to me anyway).

We have 6 servers in a test environment, all with dual-port QLogic
HBAs. Right now, for testing, I only have one port from each HBA to the
EMC/MCData FC switch. From the FC switch, there's one connection to
each of the SPs on the CX700 (SPA and SPB).

I setup a zone on the FC switch consisting of just the server HBA port
and one port on SPB (i.e., I set up 6 zones).

In Navisphere, I created 6 RAID groups, and 6 LUNs, then I created 6
Storage Groups, and moved one LUN to each Storage Groups (ServerGroup1,
ServerGroup2, ..., ServerGroup6). Finally, in Connectivity Status, I
created 6 hosts (Host1,...,Host6), and moved each host into one of the
Storage Groups (e.g., I moved Host1 into ServerGroup1, etc.).

Everything seemed to be working, and so I haven't been using Navisphere
for a few days, but then yesterday, I noticed that I had a problem
accessing the SAN from one of the servers. When I went into Navisphere,
I was really surprised to see that in all of the Storage Groups, the
host that Navisphere was showing was Host1.

In other words, now, instead of Host2 being in ServerGroup2, Navisphere
is showing Host1. Ditto for ServerGroup3 through ServerGroup6.

During this period, nothing hardware-wise has changed, i.e., we didn't
move any cables or HBAs or anything, so I'm really puzzled about why
this is happening.

Has anyone had something like this happen before?

Thanks,
Jim

There's no reason why sharing the same dummy IP should cause any
problems. A hosts's identity is tied to the WWN that you've
registered.

I can't explain how the storage groups could change spontaneously. Do
you have access to navicli, so that you can check the log from one of
your connected hosts?

Aaron

AWS wrote:

There's no reason why sharing the same dummy IP should cause any
problems. A hosts's identity is tied to the WWN that you've
registered.

I can't explain how the storage groups could change spontaneously. Do
you have access to navicli, so that you can check the log from one of
your connected hosts?

Aaron


Aaron,

I was hoping that you'd respond (you've been very helpful and
knowledgeable!).

That (that the host would be tied to the WWN) would've been what I
would've thought also, but FYI, we've been slowly going back and
re-doing all of our hosts (de-registering them then re-registering them
in Connectivity Status), but this time, we're putting in different IP
addresses for each host, and so far (cross my fingers), we've re-done
about 7 servers/hosts, and have not had the problem re-occur.

I talked to one of our EMC contacts very briefly the other day
(actually, we exchanged voicemails ), and his message said something
about the "host's MAC address". I haven't been able to get ahold of him
in the last couple of days to get clarification of what he meant by "MAC
address" (i.e., did he really MEAN "MAC" address, or was he using that
as a kind of generic term for the WWN).

I don't know about "navicli", but FYI, we did not (yet) install any
EMC-provided software on most of the (physical) hosts that we were
connecting to the SAN. Specifically, we only installed the EMC software
on one of the machines, a standalone PC that we use to access
Navisphere.
The other "hosts" don't have any EMC software on them (right now we're
doing things really simply, creating zones with just one HBA port and
one SP port in each zone and Storage Groups with just one host and one
LUN).

Given the above, I can look for "navicli" on the one standalone PC, but
then what do I do?

Jim