Huawei Symantec Oceanspace S2600 Configuration

We now have our RAID Group set up with the configuration set at RAID 10.

We then went ahead and configured our LUNs:

We have our two Intel Server System SR1695GPRX2AC units plugged in and turned on as can be seen under the Host section (4 Initiators).

At the bottom of the left hand column under Mappings in the ISM we find our four SAS initiators for the two nodes:

It took a bit to figure out just how to get the SAS IDs mapped to the LUNs. First we shut down the second node so that we would know which IDs belonged to which server:

We mapped them to the appropriate node:

Then we went to map the actual LUNs to the Hosts:

So, we moved to the Host Groups node in the left hand column of the ISM and went through the Add LUN Mapping wizard. Despite the way things looked, when we selected all of the LUNs they were given a sequential LUN ID.

That Host LUN ID drop down list near the bottom is a bit misleading.

We then had our LUNs mapped to the Default Host Group:

With that the shared storage showed up in both node’s Disk Management!

Now on to setting up MPIO in the Hyper-V node, running the Cluster Validation Wizard, and finally standing up a Hyper-V Failover Cluster for some further testing.

Some Initial Observations

Disk and LUN Configuration

Our primary DAS product has been the Promise VTrak E610sD and E310sD RAID subsystems. So, working with the Oceanspace S2600 has been a bit of a challenge since the management console and set up steps are quite different.

For one, the Oceanspace S2600 does not allow LUN level disk RAID configuration. The RAID Group that is configured with however many disks carries the RAID level.

This contrasts with the Promise VTrak’s ability to create a Disk Array and then set up whatever RAID level for each LUN we may set up in that Disk Array.

The cost is some storage space where RAID 1 would be specified for certain LUNs that would host low I/O needs such as RDS or SQL host OSs.

However, that would be balanced out with the fact that running RAID 10 underneath everything means that every LUN on the Oceanspace S2600 would receive the benefit of higher throughput.

Management Console

The Promise VTrak’s Web based management console is quite feature complex relative to the Oceanspace S2600’s console.

The plus side for the Oceanspace S2600 console is that it was quite simple to pick up on how to set up storage for our needs with very little reading needing to be done (primarily to get to know the nomenclature).

In the end, preference for one console over another is subjective. In both cases, the respective vendor’s Management Console gets the job done and that is what is most important to us.

MPIO Setup

It took a couple of reboots after removing any MPIO device references, then running:

• mpclaim –n –i –a (reboot)

Finally, in MPIOCPL.exe we saw the following on Node-01:

We then saw:

After a minute or two we finally had:

One reboot later:

But, our second node was still blank:

We manually added the Device Hardware ID as per the other node:

After a reboot and another mpclaim –n –i –a we finally had doubles of everything! One reboot later and we finally had our shared storage configured and ready for the Failover Cluster Manager’s Cluster Validation Wizard!

Long story short we had a lot of problems getting one of our nodes (they are identical all the way through) to recognize both SAS paths to the Oceanspace S2600.

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.

Huawei Symantec Oceanspace S2600 Entry Level Storage System

It is no secret that we are working on a commodity based 2 node Hyper-V Cluster to put our SMB clients into the running for high availability server systems.

As a result, Huawei Symantec (Huawei is pronounced: Wah-Way) graciously sent us one of their new entry level direct attached storage units the Oceanspace S2600.

• Huawei Symantec Oceanspace S2600 Entry Level Storage page

Once we had the S2600 out of the box and on the bench we plugged the supplied RJ45 to Serial Cable into our Tecra S10’s serial port and fired up TeraTerm using the default settings. We made sure to have controller A’s network connection plugged in as well.

Once the unit finished its first boot sequence we needed to change the default IP address using the serial connection.

• Oceanspace S2600 default username and password:
• admin
• 123456
• Oceanspace S2600 default network settings:
• IP: 192.168.128.101 or 102
• Subnet: 255.255.0.0
• Oceanspace S2600 Serial settings:
• Bits per second: 115200, Data bits: 8, Parity: None, Stop bits: 1, Flow: None.

To change the default IP address we logged into the command line on our Tecra and ran the following command:

• chgctrlip –c A –a 192.168.95.210 –s 255.255.255.0 –g 192.168.95.1

Once we had a successful IP change we were able to bring up the Oceanspace ISM:

Once we clicked on the Launch Oceanspace ISM link we needed to allow a file download which lead to:

We were then prompted for a Windows Firewall exception. Once made:

We left the default at English.

Despite being launched from the Oceanspace S2600’s web page found at the assigned IP address we had to go through a discovery process once into the ISM:

The device was promptly found:

We were then into the ISM console itself:

Now the next step will be to set up the storage subsystem and see how the S2600 hooks up to our 2 Intel Server Systems via SAS and set up a Hyper-V cluster for some performance testing.

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.

Restructuring DAS/SAN Storage Requires LD/LUN Initialization

We set up the Promise VTrak E610sD RAID subsystem and its storage for the client deployment we are going to do over the next few days.

In this case we are deploying one Intel Server System SR1695GPRX2AC (1U, Xeon X3470, 32GB, 600GB 15K SAS RAID 10) and the Promise VTrak unit. We will add the second 1U server in their new budget year and enable the cluster setup from there.

We did an initial storage configuration on the VTrak but made a few mistakes on sizes for the VMs that will be hosted by the one Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1 node.

So, we needed to wipe the Logical Drives (LDs) and start fresh. Once we did so, we went in and initiated an Initialization sequence on each new Logical Drive that was created.

We initiate the Initialization process because the Hyper-V OS may pick up the previous disk configuration information from the new LD setup.

It can be a bit confusing to be looking in Disk Management and seeing the previous LD”s configuration still listed even after rescanning the disks!

The other consideration in all of this has to do with existing data if there was any. If there were VM VHDs on the LDs or even pass through information on them any new VHD created using VHDTool (previous blog post) would be able to scan the bits and see that existing data using a tool like GetDataBack (beware of imposters).

Initializing on the VTrak does not take a lot of time. So, it is well worth the wait to make sure we have nice client LDs to start with.

Done:

Now off to enable Microsoft MPIO on the node and configure it for performance.

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.

Windows Live Writer