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.

EqualLogic simplicity

http://freeversing.com/?tag=dell-equallogic

Today is an excellent example of the Equallogic platform handling an event failure, dispatching notifications and self-healing.

LeftHand, how to write to a snapshot

http://forums13.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?admit=109447627+1307632541976+28353475&threadId=1482976

I'm a relative newbie to working with the P4000s so I am cutting my teeth with the VSA appliance.

I am testing how snaphots work, and I have successfully taken and connected to the snapshot by adding in the new ISCSI name of the snapshotted volume in the windows iscsi initiator. I have assigned the server read/write access as well, and the disk is available in computer management etc. All good, however when i try to write a file to the snapshotted disk, I get an access denied error. I've done a google, and some folk say snapshots are read only, but I am confused by the fact that I can assign a server read/write to access to the snapshot, this implies that I should be able to write to it!

Have I done something wrong or is this the way it works. And if so, is there a sneaky way I can get write access to the snapshot?

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!

An interesting LH back and forth

http://forums.citrix.com/message.jspa?messageID=1533492

Try creating a junction instead of copying the files. This worked for me. Delete the folder that you copied and then: From Command Line: C:\>mklink /j "C:\Program Files\Lefthand Networks\CLI" "C:\Program Files\HP\P4000\HP P4000 CLI" Junction created for C:\Program Files\Lefthand Networks\CLI <<===>> C:\Program Files\HP\P4000\HP P4000 CLI

Ronnie Munn Posts: 12

Re: HP LeftHand P4300  Posted: Feb 17, 2011 8:49 AM    in response to: Chris Markovic   0 users found this post useful I have also upgraded my SanIQ to 9.0 Once i did this, it broke my Storage Link Configuration. The problem was the CLIQ. Just Uninstall the 9.0 version of the CLIQ and reinstall 8.x version. The problem is because HP changed the folder path to the executable. Storage Link is looking in the wrong place for the files it needs. 8.x works great with Storage Link

jason cobb Posts: 61

Re: HP LeftHand P4300  Posted: Mar 4, 2011 12:01 PM    in response to: Ronnie Munn   0 users found this post useful The engineering team is currently working on CLiQ/SANiQ 9.0 support and have it mostly working. We are just waiting on XenServer product management to decide if we should release this support or not. I apologize for the delay. Thank you, Jason Cobb

Quick LH question

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1707808

Another EQL award

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/productsOfTheYearCategory/0,294802,sid5_tax317275_ayr2010,00.html

Lefthand SAN question

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?admit=109447626+1297290362316+28353475&threadId=1467601

Copied From:

Hi experts and colleagues, 
I have a few quick questions i hope you can help me. I am new to HP/Lefthand. I have a 4 nodes Lefthand p4300 configured in two different clusters ( 2 nodes per clusters) but in the same management group. I have a Virtul manager ip address configured for the first cluster and have all my esx VM hosts connect to the virtual manager ip address. I dont have a virtual manager ip address configured for my second cluster, I connect to the storage in the 2nd cluster via the same virtual manager ip address from the first cluster. should I configure a 2nd virtual manager? I was told the virtual manager should be shut down for failover purpose, is that true? 

The SAN storage is in production now but I want to add FOM for seamless failover. Can I add FOM without interruption to normal operation? 

I am not able to find any documentation on configuring FOM and I only see an option to install FOM with a VM image. Can FOM be installed in a physical server? 

Thanks in advance. Sorry for so many questions. 

Thanks. 


*****


The answers


http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01744737/c01744737.pdf

http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01800000/c01800000.pdf

EqualLogic wins an InfoWorlds 2011 tech award

http://www.infoworld.com/d/infoworld/infoworlds-2011-technology-the-year-award-winners-285&current=5&last=21#slideshowTop

Interesting LH & citrix configuration

http://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?threadID=280062&tstart=0

An interesting thread between some storage vendors LH & EQL included

http://arstechnica.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1132286

Lefthand support forum versus EqualLogic support forum

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Storage-Area-Networks-SAN/bd-p/bsc-257

http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/Dell+Storage+Forum+-+EqualLogic+User+Group

Rocking good reviews for EqualLogic

http://www.infoworld.com/d/storage/infoworld-review-dell-iscsi-san-sizzles-ssd-dynamic-storage-tiering-625?page=0,0

And

http://www.infoworld.com/t/server-virtualization/lab-test-new-equallogic-firmware-takes-load-vmware-856?page=0,0

A question about how to configure LeftHand SAN

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/VMWare/Q_26556427.html

I inherited a Lefthand SAN installation and have been working to figure out how it works and configure it correctly.  I hope that someone here can assist me with the configuration for our VMWare configuration.  We are running VMWare 3.5 and we need to sort out this storage solution before we upgrade to the latest version.

We need a single volume or two that can be seen by the two existing hosts we have in a VMWare cluster.  We need to add another machine to the cluster eventually, but right now we have the problem where there is not enough disk space to do anything until we expand one existing volume that is connected to the two hosts.  Also, there is a second volume that should span two hosts but doesn’t.  I can’t quite understand why because it looks like it should be configured correctly.

I have attached screen shots from the Lefthand and VMWare configurations with the hope that someone can quickly tell why this isn’t set up right and tell me the errors that prevent the two hosts don’t both see the two volumes.

Additionally, I need to know if I can simply expand one or both of the volumes (I do have space on the SAN) and also how to connect a future VMWare host to the two existing volumes.
I would be grateful if you could point me towards the best sections of documentation to read, or any other good sources of instruction.

Thanks in advance for your help.


http://filedb.experts-exchange.com/incoming/2010/10_w43/360791/LefthandSAN-Configuration.pdf

Interesting post question about configuring LH

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/System_Utilities/Remote_Access/VPN/Q_26501967.html

two interesting LH posts

Some difficulties with a LH cluster and fix

https://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?admit=109447626+1282083918853+28353475&threadId=1443755

And a not-so-obviously documented fluke in the combination of a HP LeftHand (P4000) Multi-Site Cluster and VMware vSphere hosts on multiple sites.


http://www.virtuallifestyle.nl/2010/08/hp-lefthand-multi-site-san-vmware-vsphere/

An interesting post about setting up monitoring for a LH unit

Setting it up with cacti

http://forums.cacti.net/post-197560.html

This is an interesting post from a LH user

http://itsdrivingmenuts.blogspot.com/2010/04/lefthand-san-hp.html

Don't know what his final decision was, but it shows his decision making process.

And EqualLogic comes back by growing EqualLogic engineering team by 50 per cent

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/22/dell_eqlc_eng_head/

how is equallogic fairing under dell

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/21/dell_paula_long/

With paula long leaving some are worried about how EqualLogic will be handled.

Dell EqualLogic SAN experience and review

http://www.spoonapedia.com/2010/04/dell-equallogic-san-experience-review.html

Pro's


* Easy to use

* Great performance

* Lots of useful features

* No hidden feature costs

* Excellent support

* Snapshot integration with VMware/Exchange/SQL is a nice touch

* Regular firmware updates

Con's

* No WAN optimisation for replication

* Replication can be a little fiddly to maintain

Left Hand, New network RAID features

http://vstorage.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/the-new-networkraidfeatures-of-saniq-8-5/
Interesting new features, although seems complex

Prior to 8.5 you had the choice of Network RAID-10 with 2-way replica, 3-way replica or 4-way replica. i.e 2, 3 or 4 copies of your volumes distributed across the nodes for redundancy – the downside of this; decreased usable capacity.


8.5 introduces Network RAID-5 and RAID-6.

Network RAID-5 needs three data and one parity as a minimum configuration i.e 3+1 , meaning four nodes as a starting point.

Network RAID-6 needs four data and two parity as a minimum configuration i.e 4+2 , meaning six nodes are required initially.

Unlike Network RAID-10 which creates mirror replica(s) of a volume, the documentation states the new RAID levels stripe parity across all nodes in the cluster.

Network RAID–5 and and Network RAID–6 volumes require snapshots in order to achieve space utilization benefits.


This means that deleting the last snapshot of a Network RAID–5 volume causes its space requirement to be the same as a Network RAID–10 (2-Way Mirror) volume.

Similarly deleting the last snapshot of a Network RAID–6 volume causes its space requirement to be the same as a Network RAID–10+1 (3-Way Mirror) volume.

It is possible, therefore, for the storage cluster not to have enough space to accommodate the snapshot deletion.

Deleting the last snapshot of a Network RAID-5 or Network RAID-6 volume is not recommended.

Yet another happy EqualLogic thread

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/833003030931/m/679006453041

Highlights

I've been playing the last couple of days.

The HIT kit and "Auto Snapshot Manager" tools seem to make it ridiculously easy to get hosts connected to the EQL and to take both LUN level and application (SQL/Exchange) aware snapshots of databases.

For example I'm not a SQL admin/expert but I put SQL on a test VM, created a DB and Log LUN on the EQL, created a test DB, took a DB aware snapshot of it, deleted the original, and from within the ASM tools restored it and watched it appear in real-time.

Maybe I'm easily impressed but I really do find this thing impressive given the cost/all-in licensing nature.

***

I've had EQ units for 5 years and was always happy with the improved functionality that came out with subsequent firmware updates. Even when Dell bought them the SANHQ program moved light years ahead of the beta I had tested for almost a year.

***

The EqualLogic gear is super-easy to setup. I have a pair of them racked--just waiting for the switches to come i and I am golden.

Important concept to understand with LH

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?admit=109447626+1268007997457+28353475&threadId=1411427


Hello, we just purchased a lefthand P4500 10.8 TB SAN.We created a network raid 1 volume (spanned across the two lefthand nodes)We configured MPIO as documented and it discovered well 4 paths.However, we started to do failover tests by scheduling a power off of one of the nodes (the node on which the virtual manager was running)Of course quorum is lost and access to the volume is lost, but we cannot manage to restore quorum by restarting the virtual manager on the other node. The CMC console asks us to delete first the VM, and to stop it beforehand, but it is marked as offline already.Could you please give me some advice about regaining quorum or some documentations ?Thanks.

Fran Garcia
Mar 2, 2010 09:10:24 GMT Unassigned
Hola Rodrigo :-)You need to configure a FailOver Manager to achieve a resilent cluster. In order to have cluster quorum you need to have at least (n/2)+1 active nodes, and of course that cannot be done with a 2-node cluster.There is a FOM VMWare appliance included in the Lefthand installation CD.
Mark...
Mar 2, 2010 09:53:31 GMT Unassigned
Hi,HP/LHN recommend a failover manager (FOM) at a third site as mentioned above. With the FOM then your cluster should stay up with no disruptionYou can use the Virtual Manager (VM)but the thing with the VM is NOT to start it on a node -just create it. Then, in your config of two nodes, should one of the nodes fail then you start the VM on the remaining node. This keeps disruption to a minimum. If, as in you case, you have the VM started and it is on the node that crashes you will not be able to start a new VM - as you have found out! Only one VM or FOM allowed per management group.

Complexity of LH

This post (although take with a grain of salt) points to possible more complexity and lock ups for LH.

Sorry, you will have to http://www.avivadirectory.com/bethebot/ in order to view it

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hardware/Servers/Q_25200410.html

A couple of out takes

Theire units work well for the most part, but we've had far more issues over the past years with the units locking up than you'd expect, almost always due to an incompatabilities to their OS and the underlyring RAID controller - I belive at this point we've had to upgrade the controller on 3 different occasions in 2 years. The feature set from Lefthand is quite nice for the price, but its missing a couple things, like being able to manually move the cluster VIP between boxes (its an automatic thing, so iy only does it when you down a box).

Performance on the units is fairly good, but make sure you calculate what IOPS you'll get from the units versus what you'll need to run your servers and VMs off of it. Both vendros can give estimates on what the units will give you, and what sort of number they'd expect in your environment.

OR

Not a ton (we're still using them), but more than I feel we should have. The units don't failover as gracefully as they should when one has a problem, and so we've had to do do a fair number of manual work when there's an issue to get things back running.

Example: at our HQ, we're using 2 mirrored units to host a number of mid to high importance servers - a couple VMs, data store to a couple important but low use linux servers, and a fileserver that hosts the folder redirection to laptops. When one unit hands/locks up, its supposed to gracefully fail over to the other unit, with no loss or connection drops. What actually happens is the fileserver dismounts the drive, and both the VMs and the data store file systems go to a read only state. It's all fixable, but causes significant scrambling to fix the problem.

squigit, there are two ways to set up network RAID on LeftHand., in one mode it stops if a node goes down for a high level of data protection, in the other mode it keeps going. You can also migrate a LUN to another set of nodes by jiggling about with cluster membership. Maybe you just to install the failover manager on a 3rd box to maintain quorum. Sounds like you need to go on the install/config course.