"Total storage size exceeded" message

Hello,
I have installed DSS v6 trial on Dell R510 server with h/w RAID controller, two QLE2460 FC cards, and 12x 146GB and 2x 36GB SAS drives configured as 36GB RAID-1 system partition and two RAID-5 volumes: 5x and 6x drives with one global spare, so the total capacity is 1824GB, much less than 2TB. It was working fine until I applied a product key to convert it to DSS v6 Lite. After rebooting it reports "Total storage size exceeded licensed storage capacity. Please purchase license key for bigger capacity.", I can't access any configuration screens in the management GUI, when I ran hardware diag from the console it reports "_GB" for each unit - no size, just the empty space, there is something strange.
What can I do to troubleshoot this issue? I've seen some threads that FC volumes are reported back to the DSS when a server is connected to a FC switch (my case), I can recall after I upgraded to v6_b96 some time ago I saw three more units the same size as my configured FC volumes appeared as available units to create a new volume group.
Going though some old theads I found that the system volume is not counted in the total licensed capacity, could anybody confirm if it is true?
Regards

Problem is Lite does not support hardware RAID and is seeing the sum of all drives.
You need to get a full version key for your system to work as it did in the trial.
http://www.open-e.com/download/libra..._file/view/18/

This link below shows how to calculate your capacity for either lite or the full version. Also the lite FREE product does not have FC support.

http://www.open-e.com/raid-calculator/

I checked the calculator, the sum of my drives are less then 2TB, as I stated I have 12x 146GB and 2x 36GB, it comes to 1.46TB only.
About H/W RAID support - according to DSS docs I can't manage disks and RAID volumes from the management GUI, which is OK for me for now, I know it works because I have another test system with DSS Lite v6 working with older Dell PE2850 server and the hardware RAID no problem.

I understood I can buy 2TB extension key for the Lite version. Will it fix the problem?

Lite does not support hardware RAID functions so adding more Storage license wont help, also there is no support for fc volumes in the Lite version as well only in the full version do you have these.

Yes I have two FC volumes on this system, 536GB and 640GB, and it is actually working fine, FC volumes are visible to clients.
I have another server working for a year under v6 Lite license with both FC and iSCSI volumes using H/W RAID-5 with 6x146GB drives. I'm not able to manage the RAID units form the GUI, but there is no problem to configure any volume groups, volumes, FC and iSCSI groups.
And I had one more system before with the Lite version working with FC volumes.
The question is - why does the server report storage size wrongly? How can I fix it? I shouldn't matter if it is FC or NAS volumes as soon as the storage size is within licensed capacity.

I understand if I would buy the full v6 and apply the key I would have 30 days to activate it, but it should be working in full functionality. But what if my problem will still be there? Will I be able to get a full refund?

I would like to see screen shots, especially for the Help > About section showing the SN# and version, also the message that you are getting and the volume groups and the HW RAID in the GUI and SW RAID.

We never have supported FC and RAID controllers for the V6 and V7 Lite - see link below.

http://www.open-e.com/products/open-...tware-v7-lite/

I think I know what is going on. I can explain it using my second v6 Lite system-2 with the smaller drives which has been working fine for long time and still working now. It has 2x18 GB and 4x146GB drives, OS is booted from 2GB USB drive, the drives configured as two H/W RAID (Dell Perc4) units 18GB RAID-1 and 546GB RAID-5.

1.Here is the system license info:
http://www.aforesolutions.com/dss/1-license.gif

2.two-port QLogic QLA2342 cards in target mode:
http://www.aforesolutions.com/dss/2-fc_hba.gif

3.available h/w disk units - see notes below:
http://www.aforesolutions.com/dss/3-disk_units.gif

4.configured volumes in vg00:
http://www.aforesolutions.com/dss/4-volumes.gif

As you can see on picture 4 there are four volumes: 100GB and 200GB iSCSI, 120GB and 118GB FC.

But if you go back to the unit picture #3 there are S001 18GB and S002 546GB hardware RAID units, but in addition there are also both FC volumes presented back to the system itself as units S003 and S004, despite FC card is in target mode. It means the physical drives are calculated in the total storage limit twice - first as the actual RAID units and then as the FC volumes!!!! It is definitely a bug, and I think it appeared after the server was connected to a FC switch, before I was using direct HBA-to-HBA connection.

And I know it is the same issue with the server I posted originally about, the only difference for that system-2 the total storage size is still within 2TB limit even if counted twice (2 x 546GB=1.092TB), but for the bigger system-1 it wrongly exceeds the limit. I can't post any units/volumes snapshots because the management interface just reports "Total storage size exceeded licensed storage capacity". But if I go to the console and run hardware info I can see the same problem: two actual h/w RAID units S001 and S002 plus two FC volumes from the same server, and take a look at the volume serial numers - FC volumes listed twice (S003/S005 and S004/S006) for each of two separate FC cards. So the disk are counted three times: as the RAID units and then twice again as the FC volumes!!!

http://www.aforesolutions.com/dss/5-units-system1.gif

How can I exclude FC volumes from that double count? Probably if I create a non-default FC group and allow only client initiators it would work, but I don't have access to the GUI anymore. Is there any other way to configure FC groups? Is there any way to apply temporary eval license to access management?

Regards,
Vladimir

unplug the FC cables from the switch so you can configure the groups.

I was going to try it later as there are some clients connected

I tried something on the second server and it worked:
-disconnected FC cables from the FC switch;
-rebooted DSS Lite server;
-immediately after reboot went to the console tools and modified the QLA driver options to disable initiator mode;
-re-scanned storage units, both duplicated FC volumes didn't appear, only the actual RAID units were present;
-connected FC cables back to the switch and refreshed client connections (two ESX servers);
-re-scanned again just to confirm the HBAs are still in the target mode and didn't pick up FC volumes from it-selves;

Unfortunately I noticed QLA driver options are not stored permanently, this procedure has to be re-done each reboot, it is really annoying, if I forgot to disable initiator mode it will connect fantom units again and produce the same "storage limit exceeded" message. Is there any way to save the QLA driver settings permanently? It can be extremely helpful and solve the issue.

Also I tried to create another FC host group contaning my clients WWW to allow only client access and disable storage server HBAs, but it didn't work, my ESX servers couldn't connect, I went back to the Default FC group (using the procedure described above) as I didn't have enough time. I guess this can be unsupported in the Lite version.