HP P4000 LeftHand SAN New Feature Summary SAN/iQ 9.5

http://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetPDF.aspx/4AA3-8472ENW.pdf


SAN/iQ 9.5 will expand Application Integration functionality of the P4000 to include VMware integrated snapshots.
The existing HP P4000 Windows Solution Pack is replaced by the new Application Integration Solution Pack which
includes the Application Aware Snapshot Manager.  This tool allows users to take Application Aware snapshots for
both VMware and Windows volumes and create application consistent, point in time copies for speedy and reliable
recovery of VMs.

HP P4000: Management Group Maintenance Mode, Volumes Not Available, and Cache Status Corrupt

How to resolve the problem is in the link below:

Due to electrical maintenance work, a 2 node P4000 SAN cluster with failover manager, needed to be completely powered down, and this was done in the correct order – hosts accessing the SAN powered down first, then the SAN was shut down via the “Shut Down Management Group...” option in the HP StorageWorks P4000 Centralized Management Console (CMC).

Something went wrong when the SAN was powered back up, and the result was:

i: The Management Group was operating in Maintenance Mode.

ii: All the volumes (including the Network RAID tolerant volumes) had a status of 'Not Available'.

iii: One of the Storage Systems had a status of Failed

http://cosonok.blogspot.com/2012/04/hp-p4000-management-group-maintenance.html

Lefthand P4000 and SRA

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/HP-LeftHand-P4000/HP-P4000-VSA-amp-SRA-for-Vmware-SRM-5/m-p/5420215

Texas school chooses Lefthand

http://informationweek.com/news/storage/disaster_recovery/232300673

delete a LUN from a lefthand (just interesting)

http://glazenbakje.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/vmware-delete-lun-from-esx-and-lefthand/

HP P4000 SAN Solutions - Issue While an Upgrade Is Interrupted

Something to look out for with the P4000

Issue

Sometimes when an upgrade is interrupted or a node is restarted during the upgrade, the upgrade process may still run. When trying to run the upgrade again, the following message may appear:

Solution

Use the backend to check the process running on that node. Rebooting the node is not a solution. Some process can start running again after the restart. Kill any upgrade process found using the command kill .

This guy loves his P4500 and p4300 Lefthand SAN

http://anticipationofaloversreturn.wordpress.com/tag/p4500-p4300-san-hp-lefthand-iscsi-hosted-call-recording-storage/

Horrible iSCSI performance with Lefthand

He thinks this is probably just a misconfiguration....

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1877156#1877156

I'm only testing with 1 nic as it also should be able to give 900mbit performance on the vmware enviroment.

Though I tried making 2 vmkernel NICs with different IP's on the same vswitch and bound them to iSCSI... then enabled Round-robin.

Has made no difference.

I don't think that the issue is related to load balancing tasks, but rather a communication issue between the vmware and the lefthand. The storage works perfectly when testet on a Windows 2008 server using MS iSCSI Initiator.

So it should be software related like a driver problem, misconfiguration or missing iSCSI tweaks. I just don't have a clue where the problem is.

HP P4000 SAN SANiQ 9.0 Kernel Panic Issue

http://jpaul.me/?p=2684


At some point after 208.5 days of continuous runtime, a counter in the SAN/iQ Linux kernel may incur a divide–by–zero error that leads to a kernel panic, which causes HP P4000 storage systems running SAN/iQ software version 9.0 or 9.0.01 to go offline immediately. 


After ten minutes, the HP P4300 G2, HP P4500 G2, HP P4800 G2 and HP LeftHand DL320s storage systems will perform an Automatic Server Recovery (ASR) followed by resumed operations. Other storage systems running SAN/iQ version 9.0 or 9.0.01 will hang indefinitely until manually rebooted.


I would definitively be upgrading if it were me!

whip up a Cloud in a 17-inch box with 8 pinches of HP P4000 Virtual SAN Appliance

http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Around-the-Storage-Block-Blog/New-Converged-Storage-recipe-Cloud-in-a-box/ba-p/102465

Favorite quote

With licenses installed on all servers, what should you do with the server’s available drives? Take that pool of virtual machine-ready resources, which is currently DAS, and whip it into shared storage, with 8 pinches of HP P4000 Virtual SAN Appliance. These licenses will be installed in a VM on each server and the entire pool of disks can be turned into a clustered, highly available SAN.

Lefthand, HP StorageWorks P4000 Virtual SAN Appliance

Interesting security bulletin on the P4000

http://seclists.org/bugtraq/2011/Nov/72

SUPPORT COMMUNICATION - SECURITY BULLETIN

Document ID: c03082086
Version: 1

HPSBST02722 SSRT100279 rev.1 - HP StorageWorks P4000 Virtual SAN Appliance, Execution of Arbitrary Code

NOTICE: The information in this Security Bulletin should be acted upon as soon as possible.

Quorum best pratices on 4 node cluster

Question about setting up quorum for LH

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/HP-LeftHand-P4000/Quorum-best-pratices-on-4-node-cluster/m-p/5372499

vmware's new VSA

http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Around-the-Storage-Block-Blog/VMware-s-new-VSA-and-the-HP-P4000-LeftHand-VSA/ba-p/95461

Looks like HP\lefthand's VSA is still best

LeftHand and storage manager, how to get it to work together

http://thwack.com/forums/63/storage-management/185/storage-manager-storage-profiler/32736/hp-p4000-lefthand-devices-do-n/

Hi There, We recently purchased Storage Manger specifically to monitor our HP 4000 LeftHand devices, but have since found out that the devices do not populate the required tables to storage manager for us to view the storage overview within the main console on storage manager.

A case for VSA, lefthand or maybe someone elses?

http://www.networkcomputing.com/deduplication/230800077

Of course, using vMotion requires shared storage, and there we hit a snag. My first choice, EqualLogic arrays, are just too expensive for this environment. Even a low-end disk array like an HP MSA or Dell MD3200 would cost more than $10,000 with six 300-GByte SAS drives, and that’s for a single controller model. Going to a dual controller system, which of course the enterprise storage guy inside me says is required, would add another $3,500 or so.

But if I installed a VSA with synchronous mirroring, like HP’s P4000 (Lefthand), StoreMagic, Falconstor NSS or Starwind HA, in each server, I could leverage the built-in RAID controllers, eliminate the storage controller as a single point of failure and theoretically improve reliability by storing two copies of all the data.

On the down side, I’ll give up some performance and host resources to the replication, but Dr. George’s I/O requirements are pretty light, and we have CPU to burn in the new config. Now I just have to choose a solution.

LH a question on how to setup

http://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?threadID=288695&tstart=120

So my question is ... how can I make my P4000 available on the normal network for monitoring and management purposes while storage traffic remains on the separate storage network ?

I've tried using the built-in 1GBit NIC's in the Storage nodes, connecting them to the normal network, but then I start loosing connectivity to the storage cluster as it doesn't seem to like working on two different sub-nets.

Has anyone got experience with this kind of scenario ?

Any help is really appreciated.

An White paper commisioned by HP for the P4000 (left hand) SAN

http://www.scribd.com/doc/57020729/4AA2-7788ENW



Value of Adding Nodes Online via Storage Clustering
Eighty percent of the users interviewed were actively using this ability with extremely good—and impressive—results that garnered much positive commentary:
 “Prior to the P4000, this took 3-4 days of effort, now it’s just 2 minutes (this happens 4-5 times per year).”
 “We had 2 FTEs before—so this alone saves us one of those and contributes probably $100,000 in cost savings in terms of the uptime; not to mention the 60 or so hours of administration time saved. Our prior approach took at least a month to upgrade, plus overtime, plus downtime … and we were managing a far smaller capacity than now.”
 A slightly more conservative user employs the feature, but “only after-hours, to be ultra safe;” it used to take 4 hours before the P4000 and now takes “minutes.”
 Although only done twice in four years, the approach without the P4000 capability took three weekends of 1 FTE to migrate 5 TB (11 volumes) “and of course, that was just moving the data; the device would be down.” Now it “can be migrated in minutes with a simple point and click—it’s never offline and there’s no overtime.”
White Paper: Business and Operational Benefits Achieved with HP P4000 SANs 9
© 2010, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 “Before it took at least a day and now it’s minutes.”
 One user spoke of the social convenience (staff “not having to pull all-nighters”) and “extreme confidence” with the online upgrades; saving the overtime was nice, but the improved reliability for customers was excellent. The user also pointed out that the online upgrade saved not just the time of the upgrade itself, but also the three or four days of planning it used to need beforehand.



Value of Thin Provisioning
The use of thin provisioning fell into two distinct camps:
1) Those few users that either barely or did not use thin provisioning at all.
a. One user said it was “not comfortable” and “feels that it’s even less management effort to not try to use it.”
2) The majority, however, do use thin provisioning extensively; on average for around 80% of their volumes. Some examples of individual experiences are:
a. Saving 25% capacity (lower than might be expected because they used to manually over-provision in any case).
b. Saves or reclaims about 40% of capacity; while readers will need to figure their own dollar value, for this user it equated to $50-60,000 per annum.
c. Two users estimated saving a week’s worth of FTE time per year.
d. Saving 50% capacity through reclamation and deferring purchases, said one user, while another estimated 30-40% savings.
e. “Really easy and really quick” was the succinct summary from one customer.

An interesting possible development for LH vars

http://www.thevarguy.com/2011/06/02/scale-computing-looking-for-a-few-good-unhappy-hp-vars/

Scale Computing is questioning HP’s commitment to smaller VARs, since it believes the new changes could cause unnecessary problems or hurdles.

A fairly unhappy LH customer

From


http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/140475-iscsi-virtual-appliances?page=1#entry-768652


HP P4000 is technically a software SAN (you can buy it as a license, and install it yourself). While they are the only VSA that supports VAAI, I would never deploy one again. Crazy things like it automatically creates a new target for every LUN, use of a single virtual IP for all targets, makes management a pain in the ass. GUI is slow as hell, and its an overpriced linux system that isn't that well built or supported (8 hours after I logged a critical ticket I got a voicemail at 10pm saying "hey we're kinda busy today, give us a call back tomr if your still down").

Interesting post on setting up HP p4000 VSA

http://www.vladan.fr/vmware-srm-hp-p4000-vsa-intricacies/

It sounds like he got his cluster up in a snap!