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Install Solutions Enabler on Linux

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Installing solutions enabler on Redhat/Centos 5.x will fail, it looks like latest version of Redhat/Centos that work with Solutions Enabler is 4.8. To install Solutions Enabler to Redhat/Centos 4.8, gunizip and untar file you have downloaded from powerlink and run (this will install with all default):

[root@labhost12 emc]# ./se6520_install.sh -install -silent

#—————————————————————————-
# EMC Installation Manager
#—————————————————————————-
Copyright 2007, EMC Corporation
All rights reserved.

The terms of your use of this software are governed by the
applicable contract.

Solutions Enabler Native Installer[RT] Kit Location : /root/emc

Checking for OS version compatibility……
Checking for previous installation of Solutions Enabler……

Checking for active processes…..
Checking for /usr/symcli/storbin/cimserver…
Checking for /usr/symcli/bin/symapisrv…

Checking for active SYMCLI components…

Checking for LIBGCC version compatibility……

Checking for disk space availability….

Installing symcli-datacore-V6.5.2-0.i386.rpm…..

Installing symcli-datastorbase-V6.5.2-0.i386.rpm…..

Installing symcli-core-V6.5.2-0.i386.rpm…..

Installing symcli-storbase-V6.5.2-0.i386.rpm…..

Installing symcli-srmbase-V6.5.2-0.i386.rpm…..

Installing symcli-storfull-V6.5.2-0.i386.rpm…..

Installing symcli-symcli-V6.5.2-0.i386.rpm…..

Installing symcli-star_perl-V6.5.2-0.i386.rpm…..

Installing symcli-symrecover-V6.5.2-0.i386.rpm…..

Installing symcli-64bit-V6.5.2-0.x86_64.rpm…..

Creating OPENSSL Certificate….

Enabling stordaemon…

Do not forget to run ‘symcfg discover’ after the installation
completes and whenever your configuration changes.

You may need to manually rediscover remotely connected
arrays. Please see the installation notes for further
information.

#—————————————————————————–
# The following HAS BEEN INSTALLED in /opt/emc via the rpm utility.
#—————————————————————————–
ITEM PRODUCT VERSION
01 EMC Solutions Enabler V6.5.2.0
RT KIT
#—————————————————————————–

That will install symcli commands to /opt/emc/SYMCLI/V6.5.2/bin

Now you need to copy symapi license key file in its place, and you are done.

Posted in EMC | 1 Comment »

Brocade switch firmware upgrade

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

I have found old Brocade 3250 lying around with FOS 4.2.0b:

SW2:admin> firmwareShow
Primary partition: v4.2.0b
Secondary Partition: v4.2.0b

Brocade supports firmware upgrades within two feature releases (a feature release is a major release indicated by the second digit “Y” of the release number, for example, X.Y.Z); while upgrades of two releases is supported, single release upgrades are recommended. Following are the major upgrade versions for the Fabric OS:
- v4.0
- v4.1
- v4.2
- v4.4.0
- v5.0.1
- v5.1.0
- v5.3.0
- v6.0.1
- v6.2.3

It is advised that you upload your switch config by running configUpload before running firmware upgrade.

Gotcha during the firmware upgrade is when asked for file name to use a file name without architecture directory which is different for different types of switches (starts with SWBDxx)

drwxr-xr-x 2 dnd dnd 4096 Jun 13 2006 SWBD26
drwxr-xr-x 2 dnd dnd 4096 Jun 13 2006 SWBD27
drwxr-xr-x 2 dnd dnd 4096 Jun 13 2006 SWBD29
drwxr-xr-x 2 dnd dnd 4096 Jun 13 2006 SWBD31
drwxr-xr-x 2 dnd dnd 4096 Jun 13 2006 SWBD32
drwxr-xr-x 2 dnd dnd 4096 Jun 13 2006 SWBD33

this directory is selected automatically during the download, so you need to omit it when asked for file name.

SW2:admin> firmwareDownload
You can run firmwareDownloadStatus to get the status
of this command.

This command will cause the switch to reset and will
require that existing telnet, secure telnet or SSH
sessions be restarted.

Do you want to continue [Y]: y
Server Name or IP Address: 192.168.1.25
User Name: dnd
File Name: /home/dnd/fos/v4.4.2b/release.plist
Password:
Firmwaredownload has started.
Start to install packages……
dir ##################################################
ldconfig ##################################################
glibc ##################################################
….

Write kernel image into flash.
………………………….
Verification SUCCEEDED
All packages have been downloaded successfully.
Firmwaredownload has completed successfully.
HA Rebooting …

after reboot run:

SW2:admin> firmwareShow
Primary partition: v4.4.2b
Secondary Partition: Version is not available

firmware is committing to secondary partition so version info is not yet available. After few min:

SW2:admin> firmwareShow
Primary partition: v4.4.2b
Secondary Partition: v4.4.2b

done. Time to update to FOS 5.x.x

Note: if you don’t want reboot and firmwareCommit to be performed automatically, run ‘firmwareDownload -s’ and you’ll get an option to disable reboot and auto firmwareCommit when runing firmwareDownload, here is an example:

SW2:admin> firmwareDownload -s
Server Name or IP Address: 192.168.1.25
User Name: dnd
File Name: /home/dnd/fos/v5.0.5f/release.plist
Password:
Do Auto-Commit after Reboot [Y]: N
Reboot system after download [N]: N
Firmwaredownload has started.
Start to install packages……
dir ##################################################
ldconfig ##################################################
…
sysstat ##################################################
Write kernel image into flash.
………………………….
Verification SUCCEEDED
Removing unneeded files, please wait …
Finished removing unneeded files.

All packages have been downloaded successfully.
Firmwaredownload has completed successfully.
SW2:admin> firmwareshow
Primary partition: v4.4.2b
Secondary Partition: v5.0.5f
SW2:admin> reboot

after reboot:

SW2:admin> firmwareshow
Primary partition: v5.0.5f
Secondary Partition: v4.4.2b
SW2:admin> firmwareCommit
Validating primary partition…
Doing firmwarecommit now.
Please wait …
Replicating kernel image.
…………………………..
Firmwarecommit completes successfully.
SW2:admin> firmwareshow
Primary partition: v5.0.5f
Secondary Partition: v5.0.5f

If you skip a firmware version when you run firmwareDownload, upgrade will fail:

SW2:admin> firmwareDownload -s
Server Name or IP Address: 192.168.1.25
User Name: dnd
File Name: /home/dnd/fos/v5.3.2a/release.plist
Password:
Do Auto-Commit after Reboot [Y]: Y
Reboot system after download [N]: Y
Firmwaredownload has started.
Cannot upgrade directly to 5.3. Please upgrade to 5.1 or 5.2 first and then upgrade to 5.3.
Firmwaredownload failed. (0×29) The pre-install script failed.

useful doc which also explains firmware upgrade process for switches with dual CPs: https://www.eng.utoledo.edu/ecc/secure-docs/user/sun_docs/brocade_3850/53_1000039_02.pdf

Posted in Brocade, SAN | No Comments »

Disk partition aligment

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Misaligned partitions can affect disk I/O peformance by 30% or more for random I/O. Test on this page http://sqlblog.com/blogs/linchi_shea/archive/2007/02/01/performance-impact-of-disk-misalignment.aspx confirm that.

The article below is from “EMC Host Connectivity Guide for Linux” and is described for CLARiiONs, but it equally applies to LUNs provided by other storage arrays:

File-system misalignment affects performance in two ways:

? Misalignment causes disk crossing: an I/O broken across two
drives (where normally one would service it).
? Misalignment makes it hard to stripe-align large uncached writes.

The first case is more commonly encountered. Even if the disk
operations are buffered by cache, the effect can be detrimental, as it
will slow flushing from the cache. Random reads, which by nature
require disk access, are also affected, both directly (waiting for two
drives in order to return data) and indirectly (making the disks busier
than they need to be).
Alignment issues only affect striped LUNs, so RAID 1 is not affected.
However, two disk RAID 1/0 groups are now allowed. They will use
striping once expanded to four or more disks and should be aligned
from the outset.
For greater detail on this and other performance issues regarding the
CLARiiON array, please refer to Powerlink and search for EMC
CLARiiON Best Practices for Fibre Channel Storage.
Aligning the partition
In Linux, align the partition table before data is written to the LUN as
the partition map will be rewritten and all data on the LUN
destroyed. In the following example, the LUN is mapped to
/dev/emcpowerah, and the LUN stripe element size is 128 blocks.
Arguments for the fdisk(8) utility are as follows:
root #> fdisk /dev/emcpowerah

enter x expert mode
enter b adjust starting block number
enter 1 choose partition 1
enter 128 set it to 128, our stripe element size
enter w write the new partition

This method is preferable to the Navisphere LUN alignment offset
method for LUNs that will have a snapshot, BCV, or MirrorView
image made of them. It is preferred for SANCopy sources and targets
as well.

Here is process for partition alignment for windows (from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa995867%28EXCHG.65%29.aspx):

To align Exchange I/O with storage track boundaries using Diskpart.exe

If the disk you are aligning is already blank (raw), proceed to Step 3. If the disk contains data, backup the disk before proceeding.
2.

Delete all partitions on the disk.
3.

Open a command prompt, and execute Diskpart.exe.
4.

At the Diskpart command prompt, type List Disk and press Enter. If the disk you want to align does not appear in the list make sure that it exists and is accessible using the Disk Management snap-in.
5.

At the Diskpart command prompt, type Select Disk X, where X is the number of the disk as shown in the output of the List Disk command. Diskpart should return a message that indicates that Disk X is the selected disk.
6.

At the Diskpart command prompt, type Create Partition Primary Align=X, where X is either 32 or 64, depending on the recommendation from your storage vendor. If your storage vendor does not have any specific recommendations, it is recommended that you use 64.
7.

At the Diskpart command prompt, type Assign Letter=. For example, to assign letter Z to the disk, type Assign Letter=Z.
8.

Once the drive letter is assigned, type exit to exit out of the Diskpart utility.
9.

Use the Disk Management snap-in or the Windows Format command to format the partition as an NTFS-formatted partition.

Vista seems to be aligning its disk partitions while XP 32-bit and 64-bit are not.

Posted in EMC, Linux, SAN, Windows | No Comments »

Going to Lisa '09

Monday, October 26th, 2009

For those who didn’t know, Lisa ’09 is in Baltimore, MD from Nov. 2nd to Nov, 6th. Nov. 4th (Data Storage Day) is free http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa09/dsdl09.html

Posted in Linux, SAN | No Comments »

Find Brocade switch type

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

Switch Types and Product Names

NOTE: Switch type output displays these values with 1.x for the Brocade 1000 family, 2.x for Brocade 2800, and so on. The “x” value refers to motherboard revision level.

From: http://community.brocade.com/home/servlet/JiveServlet/download/6996-1671/SwitchTypes_GA-TN-015-02.pdf;jsessionid=7E68852C08F694332BC222E879EB72AC

sandcxsw01a> switchshow
switchName:     sandcxsw01a
switchType:     62.3
switchState:    Online
switchMode:     Native
switchRole:     Principal
switchDomain:   1
switchId:       fffc01
switchWwn:      10:00:00:02:1c:9a:17:00
zoning:         ON (sandcxsw01a_cfg)
switchBeacon:   OFF
FC Router:      OFF
FC Router BB Fabric ID: 1

Index Slot Port Address Media Speed State     Proto
===================================================
0    1    0   010000   id    N4   No_Light    FC
1    1    1   010100   id    N4   No_Light    FC
2    1    2   010200   id    N4   No_Light    FC
3    1    3   010300   id    N4   No_Light    FC

…

Switch Type	Switch Name
1	Brocade 1000 Switches
2, 6	Brocade 2800 Switch
3	Brocade 2100, 2400 Switches
4	Brocade 20×0, 2010, 2040, 2050 Switches
5	Brocade 22×0, 2210, 2240, 2250 Switches
7	Brocade 2000 Switch
9	Brocade 3800 Switch
10	Brocade 12000 Director
12	Brocade 3900 Switch
16	Brocade 3200 Switch
17	Brocade 3800VL
18	Brocade 3000 Switch
21	Brocade 24000 Director
22	Brocade 3016 Switch
26	Brocade 3850 Switch
27	Brocade 3250 Switch
29	Brocade 4012 Embedded Switch
32	Brocade 4100 Switch
33	Brocade 3014 Switch
34	Brocade 200E Switch
36	Brocade FR4-18i Director Blade
37	Brocade 4020 Embedded Switch
38	Brocade 7420 SAN Router
40	Fibre Channel Routing (FCR) Front Domain
41	Fibre Channel Routing, (FCR) Xlate Domain
42	Brocade 48000 Director
43	Brocade 4024 Embedded Switch
44	Brocade 4900 Switch
45	Brocade 4016 Embedded Switch
46	Brocade 7500 Switch
47	Brocade FC4-16IP Director Blade
51	Brocade 4018 Embedded Switch
55	Brocade FA4-18i Extension Blade
55.2	Brocade 7600 Switch
58	Brocade 5000 Switch
62	Brocade DCX Backbone
64	Brocade 5300 Switch
66	Brocade 5100 Switch
67	Brocade Encryption Switch
69	Brocade 5410 Blade
71	Brocade 300 Embedded Switch
72	Brocade 5480 Embedded Switch
75	Brocade M5424 Embedded Switch