Instruction Manual

FC-SCSI Dual RAID Module User's Guide - Rev. A01 StorCase Technology, Inc.
Configuration 101
Understanding the Active-Active Configuration
Controller A - The primary controller. The controller's identity is displayed continuously
at the bottom of the Disk Array Administrator screen.
Controller B - The secondary controller. The controller's identity is displayed continu-
ously at the bottom of the Disk Array Administrator screen.
Failback - The act of returning ownership of controller resources from a surviving
controller to a previously failed (but now active) controller. The resources
include disk arrays, cache data, and host ID information.
Failover - The act of temporarily transferring ownership of controller resources
from a failed controller to a surviving controller. The resources include
disk arrays, cache data, and host ID information.
Kill - One controller can kill the other controller by resetting it and taking it off-
line.
Other - The opposite controller from the one currently being used.
Ownership - In an Active-Active configuration, a single controller has ownership of the
following resources: arrays and dedicated spares. When a controller
fails, the other controller assumes temporary ownership of its resources.
Unkill - When a surviving controller removes the reset from the other controller,
it unkills it. The other controller will reboot and attempt to come on-line.
In order to run the two controller modules in Active-Active mode:
- The two controllers must be installed in a proper configuration.
- Both controllers must be loaded with compatible firmware levels. The system auto-
matically detects firmware incompatibilities and will halt the boot of the second
controller.
- The operating mode of each controller must be set to Active-Active.
- Host channel 0 of each controller must be set to a different ID only if using a single
host interface. If using two host connections, then each controller's host channel can
have the same ID.