[SunHELP] SUMMARY: Veritas VM help connecting to an ESS?

[Tim Bingham]

My original problem was an attempt to get a Sun 420R running Solaris 
7 with Veritas Volume Manager 3.5 and an Emulex LP8000 HBA (with 
current firmware and drivers) to connect to IBM ESS Shark storage.

During boot, Veritas VM started before the polling of disks was 
finished on the LP8000 and Veritas would declare the unpolled disks 
absent.

Many different attempts at modifying sd.conf, lpfc.conf, and putting 
delays in the Veritas startup did nothing.

Replacing the LP8000 with an LP9002L-F2 with the appropriate new 
drivers has fixed the problem. The SCSI driver now polls the HBA much 
sooner in the boot process and the disks are established before 
Veritas VM starts up.

Thanks to:

"Markham, Richard" <RMarkham at hafeleamericas.com>
"Andrew Hay" <adh at an.bradford.ma.us>
Miguel Demaerel <Miguel.Demaerel at Brussels.sema.slb.com>
Scott Mickey <mickey at denver.net>
Reggie Beavers <reggiebeavers at fstha.com>
"Derrick D. Daugherty" <derrick at tachyon.pointone.com>
joe.fletcher at btconnect.com
Travis Freeland <travis at deakin.edu.au>

They all offered suggestions that helped educate me in the workings 
of the pieces involved in this problem.

Tim


>I have Veritas Volume Manager 3.5 on a 420R running Solaris 7. I'm 
>trying to connect two disks defined on an IBM ESS Shark through an 
>Emulex LP8000 HBA.
>
>I can see the disks correctly and configure them in VM without a problem.
>
>At boot time though, the polling of the disks takes quite a while 
>and Veritas VM starts before the second LUN is discovered. VM 
>declares the second disk is missing and starts the process of moving 
>data around to recreate the mirrors on the lost device. Once the 
>system is booted to where I can login, I can issue a "vxdctl enable" 
>and that rediscovers the disk and I can add it back into the disk 
>group but it's too late.
>
>Is there a way to discover the disks earlier in the boot process, or 
>a way to delay the start of VM? The volumes on the disks in question 
>are not part of rootdg. I tried forceloading the lpfc driver for the 
>HBA in /etc/system but that didn't speed up polling of the disks.
>
>Any help would be appreciated! I've been wrestling with this one for a while.
>
>Thanks,
>Tim

-- 
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Tim Bingham
Unix/VMS System Manager
Operations and Network Services
Information Management & Technology
SUNY Upstate Medical University
750 East Adams Street
Syracuse, NY  13210
phone 315.464.8294