HP SureStore E Disk Array 12H on the HP 3000

Rich Bassett
Walt McCullough
Commercial Systems Division

Site, Software and Hardware Requirements

The following is a summary of Site, Software and Hardware requirements for support of the HP SureStore E Disk Array 12H.Device installation and support is to be provided by HP. For detailed information on the support and configuration of the Model 12H AutoRAID, field support personnel should consult the updated version of the following documents:

HP SureStore E Disk Array 12H -- System Administrators Guide for HP-UX, MPE/iX and Microsoft Windows NT
Users and Service Manual
Control Panel Quick Reference Card

These documents are located on the following external web page:

http://www.hp.com/essd/model12H_alldocs.html




	NOTE: The ARMserver software will be provided as a patch for MPE/iX 6.5.

AutoRAID Configuration Requirements

Model 12H AutoRAID is supported using firmware revision 56
Controller Mode should be set to Normal
X Controller to be connected to the HP 3000, Y controller unconnected and terminated
Rebuild priority should be set to High
Loginal Unit Number (LUN) (0) must be configured

Host Hardware/Firmware Requirements

Support will only be allowed on a dedicated SCSI bus, with no other types of devices (homogeneous bus environment).
Daisy chaining of two or more model 12H is supported within the recommended SCSI configuration.
NOTE: Recommended SCSI Configuration: Maximum of 15 LDEVs per SCSI bus (Maximum of 8 LDEVs for performance.) Having 9 or more LDEVs configured will cause performance degeneration under high I/O loads.
No support for shared SCSI busses.
F/W SCSI Device Adapter Card (28696A, known as "Wizard) firmware MUST be at level 3728 or greater
9x9 Core I/O card (A2372-60004 or A3453-60010) will be conditionally supported with the following requirements:
- Must disconnect all internal F/W SCSI drives
- Must have firmware level of 3636.
- Up to 8 LDEVs will be supported (Tested limit).
Ldev 1 boot will have the following conditions:
- Ldev 1 capacity limited to 4 Gbytes

Host Software Requirements

The Model 12H AutoRAID is supported on the MPE/iX 6.5 operating system with the addition of two software patches:

MPE/iX C.65.01 (6.5)
Software Patches:
- The first patch contains the new TYPE manager and changes to SDARRAY for support of the new SCSI passthru functionality. This functionally is needed for the AutoRAID Management (ARM) utilities.
- The second patch contains the ARM utilities. This patch is installed under the MPE/iX POSIX environment. Information on how to install the this patch, see the MPE/iX and SureStore E Disk Array 12H AutoRAID Manager Installation Guide
  NOTE: The latest patches are available from the HP Patch web site.
The SYSGEN product ID is HPDARRAY. See Configuring AutoRAID SCSI LUNs for MPE/iX within chapter 5 of the System Administrators Guide for HP-UX, MPE/iX, and Microsoft Windows NT for how to perform the SYSGEN configuration.

Host Diagnostic Support

Sysmap will identify the Model 12H AutoRAID as unsupported. For diagnostic support, the ARM utilities will replace the current SHERLOCK diagnostic. Note that SCSIDSK2 can still be used to perform disk trouble analysis, but this is not a supported tool for the Model 12H AutoRAID product.

Off-line Diagnostics

There is a new off-line utility called ARDIAG that is supported within the support media off-line (ODE) diagnostics. See chapter 7 of the HP SureStore E Disk Array 12H System Administrators Guide for HP-UX, MPE/iX, and Microsoft Windows NT for how to use this command.

Configuring the 12H for Performance on the HP 3000

The single X controller is the only connection to the HP 3000 supported for this release. It is recommended that you purchase the second Y controller in case of controller failure. The second controller will be able to take over when swapped into place, for it maintains a copy of the current firmware and disk maps
If your 12H contains 12 18Gb disk drives we recommend configuring each of the LUNs for 11Gb of storage. This has shown to give the best performance versus capacity. This capacity allows for RAID1 and available space for two hot spare disks.
Total capacity of the LUNs should not exceed 90Gb. If this capacity is exceeded then you will trade performance with capacity.
Data Resiliency Mode should be set to Normal. Some users have reported slow times for large restores. This problem can be corrected by setting the Data Resiliency Mode to Performance Mode only during the restore. Remember to reset the mode back to Normal when your large restore is completed.
Rebuild Priority should be set to High. This may cause some degradation in OLTP but will reduce the likelihood of encountering a disk mechanical failure while the system is still recovering from a previous disk mechanical failure.