HP VMA SAN Gateway for VMA-series Memory Arrays Release Notes - May 2012 - Software OE version G5.1.0

Additional platform/OS specific considerations

The following sections provide additional server platform and operating system specific supported

configuration considerations and recommendations.

HP-UX 11i v3

The Integrity Superdome 2 and BL8x0c i2 server blades require HP-UX 11i v3 update 10 (fusion

1203) or newer when connecting to the VMA SAN Gateway with VMA-series Memory Arrays. The

following subsections describe additional limitations and considerations when using HP-UX 11i v3.

Must Use Agile View – No Legacy View Support

The VMA SAN Gateway is only supported with the ‘Agile View’ and Persistent DSFs of HP-UX 11i v3

Mass Storage Stack. The VMA SAN Gateway does not support SCSI Volume Set Addressing and

therefore is not supported with the Legacy View mode of HP-UX 11i v3. This is because the VMA

SAN Gateway only supports the de facto standard Peripheral Device Addressing (PDA) mode.

Legacy mode requires Volume Set Addressing (VSA) for targets which support greater than 8 LUNs

(LUN IDs 0-7) attached. The ‘Agile View’ of HP-UX 11i v3 Mass Storage Stack supports both PDA

and VSA addressing modes for storage devices and also provides I/O and connectivity support well

beyond 11i v2 limits. The backward compatible ‘Legacy View’ support delivered with HP-UX 11i v3

is scheduled to be deprecated with the next major release of HP-UX.

Similarly you must only use the ‘Agile View’ capabilities of management utilities such as System

Management Homepage (SMH) when managing LUNs created on the VMA array so that all LUNs

beyond LUN ID 7 are viewable and manageable.

Do Not Create a LUN 0 on the VMA Array

One of the values of HP-UX, especially the 11i v3 release, is commitment and focus on data integrity.

With 11i v3 and ability to bind DSFs to LUN WWIDs, we are also able to ensure that when a storage

device/LUN replacement is made that it is intentional. If there is a device with a new LUN WWID

connected to where a device was previously connected and only the LUN WWID has changed, HP-

UX 11i v3 asks for authorization to allow that replacement of device before allowing access,

especially writing to it, which could cause accidental data loss if it was not the correct device nor

intended to be a replacement device. For this reason it is recommended to not explicitly configure a

LUN ID 0 on the VMA SAN Gateway as any change or inability to access the created LUN 0 could

cause inaccessibility to all LUNs and stored data.

Queue-Depth Settings Using TPCC with HP-UX 11i v3

It is highly recommended to use the Target Port Congestion Control (TPCC) feature available with the

HP-UX 11i v3 Mass Storage Stack to manage and control I/O queue depth with the VMA SAN

Gateway. For additional information and usage of TPCC, see the “HP-UX 11i v3 Congestion Control

Management for Storage White Paper” available at:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c02054623/c02054623.pdf

Use the following table to determine appropriate TPCC settings with HP-UX 11i v3 for your

environment:

Table 3. HP-UX 11i v3 TPCC queue depth values.

THEN TPCC Setting is

I/Os are 4KB aligned and < 256KB 1024 / number of servers*

I/Os are 4KB aligned and > 256KB 512 / number of servers*