[SunHELP] MultiHosting an A5200

Mon Jan 14 12:15:03 CST 2002

Figured I'd post to this list, too...

Changa
----- Forwarded by Changamire Anderson/Person/World Bank on 01/14/2002 01:12 PM
-----

                    canderson1 at worldbank.or                                                                                               
                    g                              To:     Sunmanagers at Sunmanagers.Org                                                    
                    Sent by:                       cc:                                                                                    
                    sunmanagers-admin at sunma        Subject:     MultiHosting an A5200                                                     
                    nagers.org                                                                                                            

                    01/11/2002 06:48 PM                                                                                                   

Hello, all,
     been a while but I've got a few questions:

     According to the Sun A5200 Configuration Manual, you can connect 1,2,3, or
4 hosts to one A5200.  It does not say anything about the requirements to do
this nor whether all disks can be seen by all of the hosts at the same time
(slit-loop, full-loop, whatever).  What I'd like to do is connect 4 hosts to 1
or more A5200s and have them all able to see all of the disks at the same time.
I'd even be satisfied with 2 hosts seeing half of the array and the other 2
seeing the other half.  So here goes:

0)  Has anyone done this successfully or seen this config before?
1)  What are the configuration requirements, if any, when doing this?  Do all
hosts need to have the same OS, same hardware classification, same CPU type,
same fibre card firmware, etc...?
2)  When four hosts are connected, will all four be able to see all of the disk
at the same time (not mount them but see them in format -- this is the main
thing I'm trying to accomplish)?
3)  Are there any Veritas Volume Manager or Cluster Server caveats when doing
this?
4)  I tried the following (this was just preliminary testing, I'm gonna play
more on Monday):  I have two hosts (2 Sun Fire 280Rs running Solaris 8 patched
recently) connected to one A5200 on ports A0 and B0 (A and B configured as a
single loop).  I added another GBIC to A1 while the A5200 was online.  I
connected another already booted host (Ultra 10 running 8 patched recently) to
A1 on the A5200.  As soon as I did this, the host on A0 (280R) lost connection
to the disks and the host on A1 (U10) couldn't see the disks just yet.  I took
A1(U10) out, put it back in and it could see the disks in format.  I put
A0(280R) back in and it kicked A1 out (U10).  At that point, I concluded my
tests (it was close enough to quittin time) and called Sun Support.  They said
that it should work with all the disks being accessible by all of the hosts.  I
told them it didn't, told them my theories, we chatted, and the outcome was for
me to try a whole bunch of things that I was gonna try eventually anyway (no
solid answer).
5)  Are they any expert mode luxadm commands (like quiesce the bus or something)
or A5200 configurations I need to run/make or do I just plug and play?
6)  Any other questions this may raise in your brain cells :}

TIA

Changa
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