FC Target

[gharding]

We have updated to the latest version of DSS to test the FC target feature, is there any documenttion on how to setup the dss to work as a FC target. As we have no luck doing the following

1) changed the FC to T in setup\fibre channel
2) created FC volumes in configuration\volumes
3) added the FC volume to the default group in configuration\FC Target Manager
4) added a wwn alias of the client computer in configuration\FC Target Manager

the client can not see the volumes we are using qlogic QLE2462 cards in DSS and client computers and a brocode silkworm 3250 FC switch. Any help would be appreciated

[To-M]

Can you update to latest that was released today on our FTP, site final version 121 build 2722 and let me know if this fixes the issue. Additionaly FC Target has no MPIO now, we will add it soon.

[gharding]

Hi Tom,

I have applied the update but still have the same issue is it possible for more information such as

1) do i need to make any changes to the qlogic card in the DSS server to act as a Target or is it just changing the FC to T in setup\fibre channel.

2) In the configuration\FC Target Manager the WWN alias is the client's HBA wwn or the DSS server HBA wwn?

3) Must the qlogic cards be loop or point to point.

Maybe the develpoers can provide information on there test setup of this just in case I have made some mistakes. Is there anybody out there that has it working?

Thanks

Gavin

[To-M]

Try to apply the 1.21 b. 2722 again but select option back to manufacture defaults. The reason is could be the fact the MPIO update was installed. Currently you can have only one to function.

When enabling the FC Controller set the function to Target not Initiator in Setup > FC Channel.
Leave the defaults for group. You do not need to add any additional groups.

If directly connecting to the server without switch set for loop if switch set point to point. You want to keep it consistent on both ends.

Then use the FC Initiator from the QLogic.

[gharding]

Hi Todd,

I have done what you have suggested without sucess the only point i am unclear about is you mention the FC initiator from qlogic?

Gavin

[To-M]

Disregard "Then use the FC Initiator from the QLogic" this was meant for the Setup > FC for selecting I (initiator from the QLogic) or T (Target) - Typo for got to delete it..

I have asked our engineers to look into this as others are receiving the same issue. Hopefully next week we can resolve this.

[gharding]

Thanks for all your help, I have tried many things none of which have worked I will wait for your the engineers to look at it. One question when creating a FC volume must it be initialized or is this only relevant to iscsi volumes. I have noticed that when creating new iscsi volumes the performance for clients already connected to iscsi volumes decreases substantially while the new volume is initialized.

E.g using iometer we are getting a combined read write of 145MB/s but when running the same test while creating a new iscsi volume the performace drops to 15MB/s. Just thought I would share my experiance.

Gavin

[To-M]

Try to allow the initialization to complete first before tests. Also what was the system status from CPU readings.
When systems saw performance issues was the GUI of the DSS slow or not. Many times overhead or bottlenecks could be some other area. Send in the logs to engineering to verify speeds of drives are other cause. iSCSI and FC Volumes are given the choice to use the Initialization.

Notes from manual:

This option is available when creating iSCSI volume(s), its for security reasons. iSCSI volume will be initialized after creation process. When iSCSI volume is initializing then 'enque' button will show up. With this button you can send iSCSI volume that is initializing to the back of the initialization queue. Every volume that is waiting in queue for initialization can be also send to the back of queue, the same as volume that is already initializing.

[paul2kl]

Was this ever resolved, only i can't get it to work...
Open-e creates the Lun, and presents it.

Trying to get vmware esx 3.01 to see it, but it never see's the Lun at all.. Not using a FC switch at present so it is a direct connection between the boxes.

paul

[To-M]

Not yet as the issue is with 4GB FC cards. We need more time but the 1 and 2GB work.

[gharding]

Just to let you know we have the Fibre channel target working in DSS but had to down grade our Fibre cards to 23xx 2GB cards. I have been told that the 4GB cards are being tested and fingers crossed there may be a fix at some point in the near future maybe august sometime.

The performance we are getting at the moment is very good we are getting an average combined read/write of 265MB/s using iometer/10 workers/ 10 outstanding io's we ran the same test on a dell AX150 FC and the peformance was poor compared to open-e.

Cant wait for the four GB card to be available.

Cheers

Gavin:D

[To-M]

Thanks for update!!! This is great when you report these stats! :D

[tjk]

Garvin,

Any special tricks? I'm having a heck of a time using the latest DSS demo CD to talk to a esx 3.0.2 cluster using a qla2342 controller in the dss server (dual port 2gb). I've got the ports set to target (although my sanbox switch shows them as initiator, seems odd), the lun presented in fc manager, and my esx nodes defined in the wwn manager section.

I got iSCSI working fine without problems. I wanted to redo the testing using 2gb FC cards, I just cannot get the dss luns to show up on the esx nodes, they are all zoned properly, etc.

Any ideas?

Tom

Just to let you know we have the Fibre channel target working in DSS but had to down grade our Fibre cards to 23xx 2GB cards. I have been told that the 4GB cards are being tested and fingers crossed there may be a fix at some point in the near future maybe august sometime.

The performance we are getting at the moment is very good we are getting an average combined read/write of 265MB/s using iometer/10 workers/ 10 outstanding io's we ran the same test on a dell AX150 FC and the peformance was poor compared to open-e.

Cant wait for the four GB card to be available.

Cheers

Gavin:D

[To-M]

You may want to send this to our support team with logs to see if we can see anything that would prevent you seeing them. The only thing I found from another customer he had set his ESX to Point-to-Point on his FC HBA (VMWare client side) and it worked for him.

I hope that the 4GB driver is released this August as well; I know they are working very hard on getting this done.

[gharding]

Hi Tom,

I have not used the FC target with Vmware ESX server yet, at the moment we are using SQL, EXCHANGE and Progress Database Servers connecting by FC to DSS with volume replication and it works really well. Our Vmware VI 3 servers at the moment are running vm's from iscsi with replication and once again no problems. I am getting more fibre cards in this week and hope to start testing vmware with FC. I will keep you posted if I managed to find a solution.

I will add that initially I had to do a factory reset on the cards in the DSS server then set them in DSS as targets and then reboot the DSS server. Then Created some FC Groups, created WWN Aliases add the Aliases to the FC Group. Created the FC Volumes (do not select initialize otherwise you will not see them) assigned the FC volumes to the FC Group. Then on the clients I just installed the card and the LUN's appeared without having to configure the cards.

Regards

Gavin

[To-M]

Thanks for the update, have you tested 1.30 DSS in the "Engineering_phase" directory? Final release is scheduled next. Also this would be good to add in the VMware section - looks like you are ahead of most :).

[gharding]

Hi Todd, no I havent looked at 1.30 yet what are the changes / updates that are in this release. Do I use the normal FTP details previously supplied to me?

Regards

Gavin

[To-M]

Yes same FTP - go to /In_Engineering_Phase/DSS_ver_1_30_b_2783_beta


Preliminary release notes of DSS ver.1.30

NEW:
• synchronous (on-line) replication for NAS volumes
• Improved error/warning notification system
• Web Console Tool for LSI SAS management on the WebGUI
• Improved Intel SSR212MC2 ("McKay Creek" server) monitoring
• Support for block I/O for iSCSI protocol
• Support for 4k block size in FC protocol

UPDATED:
- improved schedule for restart and shutdown
- intel NIC drivers

FIXED
• support for Windows PDC/ADS domains (including trusted domains)
- soft raid0 problem with physical unit larger than 4TB

[gharding]

Hi Todd,

I think I will wait until they have support for the 4GB FC Cards which is what we are really wanting and the realtime failover which I thought was going to be this month or has the dates change on these two options?

Regards

Gavin

[To-M]

Update!!! This has been rescheduled and no set date will be announced. We request that all inquiries to this subject be on hold. Thank you for understanding this issue. No further details are available concerning the Auto Failover.

Please disregard any dates to this subject!!

"Failover was delayed and is expected in September"

[gharding]

What about the Qlogic 4GB FC cards are they still expected this month?

Regards

Gavin

[To-M]

We wont know until the developers complete the drivers (we had to build it and this takes longer) and run the test. It was scheduled but if they have issues they won't release it – that’s why I can give an answer yet.

[maltyx]

Any update about 4Gb FC cards that work correctly with DSS?
Still only Qlogic HBA cards are supported in Target mode?

[gharding]

Due to poor support and development time scales always slipping :mad: we have discontinued using our open-e DSS servers and are now using Datacores sanmelody :D

Regards

Gavin

[maltyx]

Just to make things clear - does DSS support 4Gb FC cards in Target Mode or not in current version. so if does not - do 2Gb FC HBA cards work as expected in that condition?

Open-E representative, please advise!

[gharding]

I can confirm that I had both the qlogic 2GB and 4GB cards working

[maltyx]

There are only PCI-X cards in compatibility list, does it mean that only Qlogic cards with PCI-X interface are supported or also PCI-Express Qlogic HBA cards with the same chipset will also be supported by DSS in target mode ?
(for example QLA2460 and QLE2460).

[gharding]

I used the PCI-e dual port 4GB qlogic (QLE2462) server hardware was dell 2950 servers

[maltyx]

Thanx, Gavin.
So PCI-E cards also supported despite the fact that they are not listed ...
I want to use VMware ESX Server 3.5 with DSS as a storage cabled through the FC card - does this pair work well or should I be prepared for surprises? Any experience with this configuration?
After reading of many threads in different forums about problems in the same configuration I am really confused ...

[gharding]

We are using ESX enterprise but had issues with DSS talking with ESX thats why we moved over to sanmelody. We have mirrored sanmelody storage servers with 4 ESX servers using them as storage with mulitpath failover works really well all 4GB fibre with brocade fibre switches

Regards

[maltyx]

Can you give more details, what kind of issues?- does this scheme (VMware uses as a storage DSS through FC) work in general or not in current versions of the products ... failover of storage server is not an issue at this time for me ... I am just looking for universal storage thar can act as NAS+SAN (iSCSI+FC support in target mode) - thats all ... do you think I can use DSS for that?
SANHarmony (that has the same functionality) only announced, but not released yet ...

Sorry for insistence, but I really need someone with experience with that configuration.

[broeken]

I want to know the same thing, i am testing now with 2 new dl360g5 servers with 2 qlogic 2362 cards in point to point mode (direct crossed fiber cables connect - no switch)

QLOGIC Target/Initiator in target mode
Created a new Logical Volume, tried to init the volume or no init at all.
Created a new fc target group, created the WWN Alias
mounted the logical volume in the tv target group en added the wwn alias.

no luck...

todd, can you shine your light on this, i want to get this working before going into production on my iSCSI r3 server


here is some debug information from the scli interface (sansurfer) on my vmware machine:

open-e lite 1Tb version: wwn = 21:00:00:e0:8b:8a:99:61
vmware 3.5 = wwn 21-00-00-1B-32-1F-50-79

HBA Model QLE2460 (SN RFC0720U62672):
Port 1 WWPN 21-00-00-1B-32-1F-50-79 (HBA instance 0) Online
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total QLogic HBA(s) : 1

Time and date: Tue Apr 15 01:17:04 2008

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HBA General Information

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Host Name : esx01.org.broeken.local
HBA Instance : 0
HBA Model : QLE2460
HBA Description : QLE2460 PCI Express to 4Gb FC Single Channel
HBA ID : 0-QLE2460
HBA Alias :
HBA Port : 1
Port Alias :
Node Name : 20-00-00-1B-32-1F-50-79
Port Name : 21-00-00-1B-32-1F-50-79
Port ID : 00-00-EF
Serial Number : RFC0720U62672
Driver Version : 7.08-vm32
BIOS Version : 1.29
Firmware Version : 4.00.29
Flash BIOS Version : 1.29
Flash FCode Version : 1.27
Flash EFI Version : 1.09
Flash Firmware Version : 4.00.30
Actual Connection Mode : Loop
Actual Data Rate : 4 Gbps
PortType (Topology) : NLPort
Target Count : 1
PCI Bus Number : 11
PCI Device Number : 0
PCIe Max Bus Width : Unknown
PCIe Max Bus Speed : Unknown
PCIe Negotiated Width : Unknown
PCIe Negotiated Speed : Unknown
HBA Status : Online
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HBA VPD Information

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HBA Instance 0: QLE2460 Port 1 WWPN 21-00-00-1B-32-1F-50-79 PortID 00-00-EF
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Product Identifier : PCI-Express Single Channel 4Gb Fibre Channel
HBA
Part Number : QLE2460
Serial Number : RFC0720U62672
Misc. Information : PW=15W
Manufacturing Id : PX2510401-60 A
EFI Driver Version : 1.09
Firmware Version : 4.00.30
BIOS Version : 1.29
FCode Version : 1.27
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HBA Parameters Settings

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HBA Instance 0: QLE2460 Port 1 WWPN 21-00-00-1B-32-1F-50-79 PortID 00-00-EF
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Connection Options : 2 - Loop Preferred, Otherwise Point-to-Point
Data Rate : Auto
Frame Size : 2048
Hard Loop ID : 0
Loop Reset Delay (seconds) : 5
Enable Host HBA BIOS : Disabled
Enable Hard Loop ID : Disabled
Enable FC Tape Support : Enabled
Operation Mode : 0 - Interrupt for every I/O completion
Interrupt Delay Timer (100ms) : 0
Execution Throttle : 16
Login Retry Count : 8
Port Down Retry Count : 16
Enable LIP Full Login : Enabled
Link Down Timeout (seconds) : 8
Enable Target Reset : Enabled
LUNs Per Target : 128
Enable Receive Out Of Order Frame: Disabled
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Driver Settings Information

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HBA Instance 0: QLE2460 Port 1 WWPN 21-00-00-1B-32-1F-50-79 PortID 00-00-EF
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------
Driver Settings - Group: Persistent
-----------------------------------
Present targets that are persistently bound plus any new target(s) : Enable
Present targets that are persistently bound Only : Disable
Present target with driver default : Disable
--------------------------------
Driver Settings - Group: Binding
--------------------------------
Bind by World Wide Port Name : Enable
Bind by Port ID : Disable
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Devices/LUNs Information

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HBA Instance 0: QLE2460 Port 1 WWPN 21-00-00-1B-32-1F-50-79 PortID 00-00-EF
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Path : 0
Target : 0
Device ID : 0x00
Product Vendor : N/A
Product ID : N/A
Product Revision : N/A
Serial Number : N/A
Node Name : 20-00-00-E0-8B-8A-99-61
Port Name : 21-00-00-E0-8B-8A-99-61
Port ID : 00-00-01
Product Type : Device
LUN Count(s) : 0
Status : Online
------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Target Persistent Binding Information

No target persistent binding configuration on HBA instance 0 (WWPN 21-00-00-1B-3
2-1F-50-79).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Selective LUNs Information

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HBA Instance 0: QLE2460 Port 1 WWPN 21-00-00-1B-32-1F-50-79 PortID 00-00-EF
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Device Vendor ID : N/A
Device Product ID: N/A
Serial Number : N/A
Device Port Name : 21-00-00-E0-8B-8A-99-61
Device Port ID : 00-00-01
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Enable Type Target/LUN Info Port Name LUN ID
------ -------- ----------------------- ----------------------- ------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HBA Instance 0: QLE2460 Port 1 WWPN 21-00-00-1B-32-1F-50-79 PortID 00-00-EF
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Boot Device Settings:
---------------------------------------
Selectable Boot: Disabled
---------------------------------------
(Primary ) Boot Port Name LUN
---------------------------- ------
00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 0
---------------------------- ------
(Alternate 1) Boot Port Name LUN
---------------------------- ------
00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 0
---------------------------- ------
(Alternate 2) Boot Port Name LUN
---------------------------- ------
00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 0
---------------------------- ------
(Alternate 3) Boot Port Name LUN
---------------------------- ------
00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 0
Finish in 0 second(s)...

[To-M]

The 2 new dl360g5 servers have 2 x qlogic 2362 but the logs show QLE2460 - try 512 block size and force to Point to Point (not 2 - Loop Preferred, Otherwise Point-to-Point).

If this does not work lets get the full logs into suport so we can look into it.

[broeken]

i think they are 2460 or 2462 cards indeed.

let me try the 512 block size tonight.

Actual Connection Mode : Loop, i should change this to p2p right ?

[To-M]

Set to Point-to-Point on the FC HBA on both sides.

[broeken]

Todd,

This helped a lot. i see al my luns now.
Is it needed to set the Frame Size in the hba from 2048 to 512 also ?

next question:
My setup in production is going to be like this:

2x dl360G5 vmware 3.5 machine with 1 qlogic hba per server
1x supermicro nas server with open-e iscsi r3 with 2 hba's

i want to connect both dl360 servers with a single fiber to the supermicro filer and share all lun's to both vmware dl360 machines.

Is this possible to do so with point to point, or is it only possible to connect one server to the iscsi r3 filer ?

Thanks in advance

[broeken]

not too soon...

when i created a virtualmachine, my storage server freeze up.

investigating now....

[broeken]

todd, this seems to be a one time event, restarted both servers, and i am creating virtual machines now, disregard the above message...

[masim]

interesting, let us know how it works...

[broeken]

todd,

Is it needed to set the Frame Size in the hba from 2048 to 512 also ?

[To-M]

If memory serves set to 2048 - send me an email and I will show images of our settings.