We are looking to scale out our two node Hyper-V failover cluster configuration beyond the two redundant SAS connections per controller on the Promise VTrak E610sD RAID Subsystem.
So, we brought in a couple LSI 6Gbit/Second SAS switches.
We see the possibility of going beyond the maximum six nodes in the Intel Modular Server using Intel R1208GZ Server Systems (previous blog post) with dual Intel RS25GB008 SAS Host Bus Adapters.
It will be interesting to see when we connect all four external SAS connectors on the two RS25GB008 HBAs for a total of four quad port SAS connections running at 6Gbit/Second at each port what kind of throughput, bandwidth, and IOPs we will see.
We have the switch out of the box, plugged in, and powered up. We changed a Windows 7 VM’s IP address to 192.168.1.101 so that we would be able to connect to the switch at its default static IP of 192.168.1.100.
Note that Java is required to connect to the management console.
The default username and password:
- Username: admin
- Password: admin
- Default IP: 192.168.1.100
Once logged in we are greeted with the SAS Domain Manager GUI:
From there we went into the Operations tab so we could configure networking for management:
Now, the next step in the process is to get the firmware updated if need be.
Out of the box this particular switch has 200.10 which has the publishing date of August 1, 2011.
- LSI SAS6160 Switch Support and Download Page
- LSI SAS6160 Switch User Guide PDF
- LSI KB 16556: Firmware for SAS Switch must be upgraded one version at a time!
So, in this case it looks as though we need to run through the upgrade process as indicated in the above KB article twice to get to the most recent version. The KB is very specific about the process too!
Note that the dates must be goofy on the downloads because the April 11th download is Phase 12 with a later version number than the firmware the switch came with.
Once we have run through the firmware updates we will be plugging in the four Intel Server System SR1695GPRX2AC servers with dual 3Gbit/Second SAS connections each into the two switches we have for a fully redundant configuration.
We will start with one Promise VTrak E610sD RAID Subsystem for destination storage. We will add a second E610sD once we have worked our way through the first few rounds of configuration and testing.
More to come . . .
Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book
*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.
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