Dell PowerVault MD3000i Technical manual

Dell™ PowerVault™
MD3000i Systems
Information Update
信息更新
Mise à jour des informations
Aktuelle Informationen
アップデート情報
정보 갱신본
Actualización de información

Dell™ PowerVault™
MD3000i Systems
Information Update

Notes, Notices, and Cautions
NOTE: A NOTE indicates important information that helps you make better use of
your computer.
NOTICE: A NOTICE indicates either potential damage to hardware or loss of data
and tells you how to avoid the problem.
CAUTION: A CAUTION indicates a potential for property damage, personal injury,
or death.
____________________
Information in this document is subject to change without notice.
© 2008 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction of these materials in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of Dell Inc.
is strictly forbidden.
Trademarks used in this text: Dell, the DELL logo, and PowerVault are trademarks of Dell Inc.;
Microsoft, Windows, and Windows Server are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft
Corporation in the United States and/or other countries; SUSE is a registered trademark of Novell,
Inc., in the United States and other countries; Red Hat and Enterprise Linux are registered trademarks
of Red Hat, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming
the marks and names or their products. Dell Inc. disclaims any proprietary interest in trademarks and
trade names other than its own.
July 2008 P/N D606F Rev. A02

Information Update 3
This document provides updated information regarding the
Dell™ PowerVault™ MD3000i Storage Enclosure. The following topics
are included:
• Increasing Bandwidth With Multiple iSCSI Sessions
• Modular Disk Storage Manager
• Supported Link Rates and Auto Negotiation
• Physical Disk Migration
• Stopping and Starting iSCSI Services
• RAID Level Migration Requirements
• Updates to the MD3000i Documentation
Increasing Bandwidth With Multiple iSCSI
Sessions
The Dell PowerVault MD3000i in the duplex configuration supports two
active/active asymmetric redundant controllers. Each controller has two
1 Gbps Ethernet ports that support iSCSI, and the bandwidth of the two
ports on the same controller can be aggregated to provide optimal
performance. A host can be configured to simultaneously use the bandwidth
of both the ports on a controller to access virtual disks owned by the
controller. The multi-path failover driver that Dell provides for the MD3000i
can be used to configure the MD3000i so that all ports will be used for
simultaneous I/O access. If the multi-path driver detects multiple paths to
the same virtual disk through the ports on the same controller, it will load
balance I/O access from the host across all the ports on the controller.
Figure 1 illustrates configuring the initiator to take advantage of the load
balancing capabilities of the multi-path failover driver.

4Information Update
Figure 1. Initiator Configuration
Two sessions with one TCP connection are configured from the host to each
controller (one session per port), for a total of four sessions. The multi-path
failover driver will balance I/O access across the sessions to the ports on the
same controller. In a duplex configuration, with virtual disks on each
controller, creating sessions using each of the iSCSI data ports of both
controllers increases bandwidth and provides load-balancing.
IP Network 1 IP Network 2
iSCSI initiator
network interfaces
host
if1 if2
controller 0
MD3000i
controller 1
P1P0
P1P0
IP Addresses
Host
If1: IP_Addr_If1
If2: IP_Addr_If2
MD3000i Controller 0
P0: IP_Addr_C0_P0
P1: IP_Addr_C0_P1
MD3000i Controller 1
P0: IP_Addr_C1_P0
P1: IP_Addr_C1_P1
TCP Connections
To MD3000i Controller 0
T01: IP_Addr_If1 / IP_Addr_C0_P0
T02: IP_Addr_If2 / IP_Addr_C1_P1
To MD3000i Controller 1
T11: IP_Addr_If1 / IP_Addr_C1_P0
T12: IP_Addr_If2 / IP_Addr_C1_P1
iSCSI Sessions
To MD3000i Controller 0
Session 00: T01
Session 01: T02
To MD3000i Controller 1
Session 10: T11
Session 11: T12

Information Update 5
Modular Disk Storage Manager
The following updates apply to the Modular Disk Storage Manager (MD
Storage Manager) software:
• Simplified Chinese is not supported when installing or using MD Storage
Manager on SUSE
®
Linux Enterprise Servers (SLES) systems.
• Japanese is not supported when using the MD Storage Manager graphical
user interface (GUI) on SLES systems.
• When install or running MD Storage Manager on Red Hat
®
Enterprise
Linux
®
4 (RHEL 4) V4 running a Chinese OS, set the proper input
manager to
miniChinput as shown below:
– Select
Applications Menu → System Settings → Input Method
Switcher
to open the input method switcher, or use the system-
switch-im command
in a terminal window.
–Under
Advanced Settings , select Chinese (P.R. of China) , or use the
im-switch –z zh_CN –s miniChinput command in a
terminal window.
NOTE: You must restart X-11 for the miniChinput input manager change to take
effect.
Supported Link Rates and Auto Negotiation
MD3000i iSCSI ports are 1000BASE-TX and require auto-negotiation to
always be present and enabled. The iSCSI ports can operate at 1Gb/sec full
duplex, 100Mb/sec full duplex, or 100Mb/s half duplex (if the other half of
the link is auto-negotiation enabled).
To avoid network performance problems, always run at 1Gb/sec.
NOTE: 10Mb/s link rate is not supported.
Physical Disk Migration
Cold powerup migration of physical disk s from an MD3000 duplex
configuration to an MD3000i duplex configuration is supported only when all
physical disk s are moved from one system to another. No other migrations,
including partial
physical disk migration and RAID controller module
migration, are supported.

6Information Update
Stopping and Starting iSCSI Services
Should it become necessary to manually stop the iSCSI services in Linux,
certain steps must be followed to maintain parallel processing between the
RAID storage array and the host server. MPP (multi-path driver) is partially
unloaded when the iSCSI services are stopped.
To ensure orderly shutdown of the iSCSI services, take the following actions:
• Stop all I/O.
• Unmount all correlated filesystems.
• Unload all modules in correct order.
Internally, these tasks can be handled by the mppiscsi_umountall script, which:
• Kills all pending I/O on each iSCSI-mounted devices via the fuser
command
• Unmounts all iSCSI-mounted devices
• Unloads the mpp_Vhba module
• Unloads the iSCSI module
Likewise, to ensure orderly startup of the iSCSI services, these actions must
occur in the following order:
1
Load the mpp_Vhba module (if not already).
2 Load the iSCSI modules.
NOTE: Unloading the iSCSI modules will kill all I/O on the iSCSI devices.
RAID Level Migration Requirements
Successful RAID Level Migration (RLM) requires that the appropriate
number of
physical disk s are present in your disk group. To perform RLM
from a RAID 1 or RAID 10 to an odd-number of physical disks (five or more)
in RAID 5, first add an even number of disks to the RAID 1 or RAID 10,
convert to RAID 5, then add your odd physical disk.

Information Update 7
Updates to the MD3000i Documentation
Hardware Owner’s Manual
The following update applies to the Dell™PowerVault™MD3000i RAID
Enclosure Hardware Owner’s Manual:
Under "Best Practices and Recommendations," the note should read:
NOTE: Use untagged VLANs for your storage needs. VLAN tagging is supported,
but not recommended.
Installation Guide
The following update applies to the Dell™PowerVault™Modular Disk 3000i
Installation Guide:
The Modular Disk Storage Manager Resource CD now features an MD3000i
Configuration Utility, which is a unified graphical user interface (GUI) that
facilitates the configuration of MD3000i storage arrays and host server
initiators. This utility assists users by gathering information about arrays via
discovery mechanisms and auto populating fields with the discovered data.
1
You can launch the MD3000i Configuration Utility from the Resource CD
by performing the following steps.
a Place the Resource CD in the CD drive. On Windows operating
systems:
• If autorun is enabled, Installer will autorun. Select the MD3000i
Configuration Utility option.
• If autorun is not enabled, run
setup.bat . Select the MD3000i
Configuration Utility option.
b On supported Linux operating systems:
• Mount the Resource CD.
• If autorun is enabled, Installer will autorun. Select the MD3000i
Configuration Utility option.
• If autorun is not enabled, run the
autorun file. Select the
MD3000i Configuration Utility option.

8Information Update
2 Microsoft iSCSI Initiator 2.07 is available for installation from the
Resource CD. This same executable is available from the Microsoft
Windows support site.
NOTE: You do not need to install the version of the Microsoft iSCSI initiator that is
provided on the resource CD for Windows Server 2008 because a native iSCSI
Initiator is already present.