Mpxio vs powerpath

I'm building a 4 node cluster with t2000's & and an EMC CX500. I'm trying to decide between the two mp solutions. I did some performance testing and the difference between the two was negligible( powerpath did do a tad bit better )
I also like some of the information powerpath can give you. When I issue a powermt display dev=all, I get an actual Clariion LUN ID, and of course the listing of paths /states. MPXIO does a great job with path's/states but I haven't figured out how to get the LUN ID from the clarion out of mpxio. Knowing which disk's are connected where is a little harder because I have to run format and match the size of the lun with which storage groups the lun is in all the time. As this grows to many lun's, i see this as a bit of a pain.
However, with powerpath I don't understand how it integrates with sun cluster. I have searched endlessly and the few snippets I've found say that you aren't supposed to use the /dev/emcpower devices created by powerpath. If I use the /dev/did devices instead, How am I getting path failover? Are those devices somehow mapped back to the emcpower devices?
Thanks for any comments or suggestions!
Jason

MPxIO is free (bundled with Solaris) so that's obviously some advantage.
You would normally use the /dev/did/dsk/dX devices in a cluster. Unfortunately I don't know anything about PP but you can get the disk ID from the following command:
bash-3.00# cldevice show -v d67
=== DID Device Instances ===
DID Device Name: /dev/did/rdsk/d67
Full Device Path: pno1:/dev/rdsk/c6t6006048000018799018253594D313038d0
Full Device Path: pno2:/dev/rdsk/c4t6006048000018799018253594D313038d0
Replication: none
default_fencing: global
Disk ID: 6006048000018799018253594d313038
Ascii Disk ID:
Hope that helps a little.
Tim
---

Similar Messages

Mpxio or Powerpath -- with EMC SANs?

We have some new T3-1B's running on Solaris 10.
We normally use PowerPath, but I'm trying to see if we can just use mpxio and be done. However, the issue I'm running into is the following.
1. I dont have any way of determining which LUN is what -- in the CX500--I use the LUN Name to determine what the disk needs to be assigned to. I see only the WWN. With Oracle RAC, it's extremely important to make sure the disks are correct to each node.
2. When adding new disks to the host, the new LUN does not appear on the host even after luxadm probe, and repeated devfsadm. Am I missing anything else? Any help would be appreciated.

I'm not sure what kind of commentary you are looking for.
We use Powerpath on Solaris 10 (x86 now, but in the past on T5120s) for multipathing to LUNs on EMC VNX and CX4 SANs. We followed the EMC Powerpath setup guide for Solaris 10 exactly.
After disabling MPxIO, Powerpath was able to take control. Some older versions of powerpath had a bug where the pseudo names for LUNs would change causing some headaches.
We keep a mapping of LUN to pseudo name to solaris dsk labels
If you use ZFS I have found a 1:1 match between the zfs_max_vdev_pending value and the max queued-IOs value shown in Powerpath
When we've had to fail/trespass LUNs over to other SPs on the EMC SANs, Powerpath has handled this elegantly with the expected warnings in /var/adm/messages
I recall that we had to explicitly set the powerpath options for CLARiiON and VNX to managed and the policy to claropt
When adding LUNs, to see all paths there is a routine to go through with cfgadm, devfsadm and the powerpath utilities. We use qlogic HBAs and the qlc leadville driver.

MPxIO vs PowerPath for EMC SAN - Solaris 10

I'm just wondering what everyone's experience has been with either option. We are in the process of upgrading to a T5120 server using Solaris 10 and Oracle 9i (we can't upgrade yet due to limitations in our current blood bank software) and connect to an EMC SAN. Our vendor says that his preference is PowerPath because he's heard of systems hanging up when MPxIO option is used. Any ideas?

I'm not sure what kind of commentary you are looking for.
We use Powerpath on Solaris 10 (x86 now, but in the past on T5120s) for multipathing to LUNs on EMC VNX and CX4 SANs. We followed the EMC Powerpath setup guide for Solaris 10 exactly.
After disabling MPxIO, Powerpath was able to take control. Some older versions of powerpath had a bug where the pseudo names for LUNs would change causing some headaches.
We keep a mapping of LUN to pseudo name to solaris dsk labels
If you use ZFS I have found a 1:1 match between the zfs_max_vdev_pending value and the max queued-IOs value shown in Powerpath
When we've had to fail/trespass LUNs over to other SPs on the EMC SANs, Powerpath has handled this elegantly with the expected warnings in /var/adm/messages
I recall that we had to explicitly set the powerpath options for CLARiiON and VNX to managed and the policy to claropt
When adding LUNs, to see all paths there is a routine to go through with cfgadm, devfsadm and the powerpath utilities. We use qlogic HBAs and the qlc leadville driver.

Bootstrap didn�t cleanup entry in path_to_inst file

Hi,
We have Solaris 9 server connected to 5 different EMC SAN array. When we want to add new LUNs it didn�t bring the new Disks. We noticed around 34,000 sd driver lines in /etc/path_to_inst file.
We did bootstrap reboot the server (removing /etc/path_to_inst file, also files under /devices and /dev dir. Rebooting server with boot �ar command).
After reboot still we are seeing around 33,000 sd driver entry in path_to_inst file. In format command output we see 3,800 disks, we expected around 3,800 sd driver entry in path_to_inst file.
Around 29,000 path_to_inst file �sd� entry we didn�t have files under /devices/ directory.
I would like to know, how to clean up these 29,000 sd driver entries from path_to_inst file.
Any idea why we are seeing 29,000 entry in path_to_inst file?
Thanks

sundaram123 wrote:
Sorry for the late response. Now we know why we are getting so many entries in path_to_inst file.
We have 22 HBAs on this server, when we add single LUN it will create 22 entries in path_to_inst file (Even if we add on path). Its kind of wired, we dont know why Solaris doing this.Because the 'sd' driver doesn't try to determine if the paths point to the same storage. All its responsible for is making sure there's a device for the hardware path (and you have 22 of them).
Other software (MPxIO, VxDMP, PowerPath) will use those 22 devices to talk to the storage via multiple paths. So they have to exist.
Darren

Mpxio or emc powerpath

I have a few questions, I would like to know how or where can I find
the needed packages to install/test mpxio on solaris9 x86?
And how does this differ from emc's powerpath/
thank!

I would counter that EMC support is primarily SPARC focused, as is true of many "enterprise" solutions. X64 support is haphazard. For example, the Clariion Server Utilities I downloaded last Fall was incorrectly packaged - for half of the packages, SPARC was substituted for X64. This was corrected as of last month, but it was an obvious oversight. At the same time, Sun's support for MPIO has improved, and is very platform-neutral (though IIRC defaults are different between SPARC/X64, RTFM).
And of course, PowerPath costs money. Solaris MPIO is now built in (no more separate Traffic Manager). If you can use recent updates to Solaris 10, there's no harm in using it. Supposedly, it coexists happily with PowerPath, if you decide to go that way for your EMC gear (but you must assure only one is managing targets at any time). But I will agree - documentation has been horrible. But the current docs look much better than I remember (as is true of most Sun docs I've seen recently, thankfully).

Using CX-500 with MPXIO

We normally use PowerPath, but I'm trying to see if we can just use mpxio and be done. However, the issue I'm running into is the following.
1. I dont have any way of determining which LUN is what -- in the CX500--I use the LUN Name to determine what the disk needs to be assigned to. I see only the WWN. With Oracle RAC, it's extremely important to make sure the disks are correct to each node.
2. When adding new disks to the host, the new LUN does not appear on the host even after luxadm probe, and repeated devfsadm. Am I missing anything else? Any help would be appreciated.

nvmk wrote:
We normally use PowerPath, but I'm trying to see if we can just use mpxio and be done. However, the issue I'm running into is the following.
1. I dont have any way of determining which LUN is what -- in the CX500--I use the LUN Name to determine what the disk needs to be assigned to. I see only the WWN. With Oracle RAC, it's extremely important to make sure the disks are correct to each node.
2. When adding new disks to the host, the new LUN does not appear on the host even after luxadm probe, and repeated devfsadm. Am I missing anything else? Any help would be appreciated.You posted your question to the Servers General Discussion forum.
I see no mention of any specific Sun/Oracle server model for your "host".
CX-500? Powerpath?
Is THIS what you are referring to? ( a link to an EMC data sheet in PDF format )
If so, that's a storage peripheral from some other company.
Perhaps you should ask EMC for guidance, because they will likely know the optimum method to use it.
Storage configuration questions should go to a forum hosted by the manufacturer of the device.

SunCluster, MPXIO, Clariion and ZFS?

Hi,
we have a 2 node cluster (SunCluster 3.2). Our Storage is a EMC Clariion CX700. We have created some zpools and integrated them into the suncluster.
We cannot use PowerPath 5.1 and 5.2 for this because sun cluster and zfs is not supported in this environment. So, we want to use mpxio. Our question is, if there is a SP-Failover at the clariion, does mpxio support this and everything works fine without any problems?
Thanks!
Greets
Björn

Hi,
What you need todo is the following.
edit this file /kernel/drv/scsi_vhci.conf
follow the directions of this link
http://www.filibeto.org/sun/lib/nonsun/emc/SolarisHostConectivity.pdf?bcsi_scan_1BD4CB6F2E356E40=0&bcsi_scan_filename=SolarisHostConectivity.pdf
regards
Filip

Remove emc powerpath devices from Solaris

Hello everyone,
I'm wondering if this is actually a trivial task or not.
I have a original system that is being migrated to a new system. The original system is using emcpower devices and I would like to use uniquely cXtYdZs# device naming.
Since we are moving the disks from one side to another I was wondering if I can just create my metadevices using the equivalent cXtYdZs# naming or not.
Any help is highly appreciated.
Thanks
Alex

Scenario is:
Old system with powerpath w/ emc storage.
Luns are cloned/copied into new emc storage
new system gets new emc storage with cloned luns.
I don't want to use powerpath, just plain MPxIO.
But from what I've been reading it should be just a matter of replacing the emcpower device by the corresponding MPxIO device.

Adding eSAN storage to a Solaris 9 box, with MPXIO and Qlogic HBAs

I recently added a few SAN drives to a Solaris-9 box and enabled MPXIO. I noticed that after you install the qlc drivers and do a reconfigure boot you see two additional devices besides the disks. These additional devices are very small and present themselves as disks. See example below
12. c5t50060482D5304D88d0 <EMC-SYMMETRIX-5772 cyl 4 alt 2 hd 15 sec 128>
/pci@8,700000/fibre-channel@4,1/fp@0,0/ssd@w50060482d5304d88,0
13. c7t50060482D5304D87d0 <EMC-SYMMETRIX-5772 cyl 4 alt 2 hd 15 sec 128>
/pci@8,700000/fibre-channel@5,1/fp@0,0/ssd@w50060482d5304d87,0
14. c8t60060480000190103862533032384632d0 <EMC-SYMMETRIX-5772 cyl 37178 alt 2 hd 60 sec 128>
/scsi_vhci/ssd@g60060480000190103862533032384632
15. c8t60060480000190103862533032384541d0 <EMC-SYMMETRIX-5772 cyl 37178 alt 2 hd 60 sec 128>
/scsi_vhci/ssd@g60060480000190103862533032384541
notice the difference in the number of cylenders. I have a couple of questions about these devices
1. What are these. The SAN storage is EMC Symmetrix
2. I see the following errors in the /var/adm/messages any time a general disk access command is run, such as format. Should I be concerned
Feb 4 13:05:35 Corrupt label; wrong magic number
Feb 4 13:05:35 scsi: WARNING: /pci@8,700000/fibre-channel@4,1/fp@0,0/ssd@w50060482d5304d88,0 (ssd21):
Feb 4 13:05:35 Corrupt label; wrong magic number
Feb 4 13:05:35 scsi: WARNING: /pci@8,700000/fibre-channel@5,1/fp@0,0/ssd@w50060482d5304d87,0 (ssd28):
Feb 4 13:05:35 Corrupt label; wrong magic number
Feb 4 13:05:35 scsi: WARNING: /pci@8,700000/fibre-channel@5,1/fp@0,0/ssd@w50060482d5304d87,0 (ssd28):
Feb 4 13:05:35 Corrupt label; wrong magic number

Gate keepers from EMC Storage, is normal.

Can't use new LUN from IBM SAN on Sol10 box w/ MPxIO.

I've got a T2000 running Solaris 10 06/06 hooked up to an IBM DS4300 via a dual-port Emulex L10000 HBA. Overall, it works fine... we've got a number of LUNs mounted, and MPxIO detects and "mpxio-izes" the device nodes. However, we've tried to add a new LUN, LUN 12, and Solaris simply won't detect it.
cfgadm sees the LUN:
# cfgadm -al -o show_SCSI_LUN
Ap_Id                          Type         Receptacle   Occupant     Condition
c2                             fc-fabric    connected    configured   unknown
c2::10000000c955c589           unknown      connected    unconfigured unknown
c2::200400a0b817c7b1,0         disk         connected    configured   unknown
[... Other LUNS...]
c2::200400a0b817c7b1,11        disk         connected    configured   unknown
c2::200400a0b817c7b1,12        disk         connected    configured   unusable   <-----
c2::200400a0b817c7b1,31        disk         connected    unconfigured unknown
c2::200500a0b817c7b1,0         disk         connected    configured   unknown
[...Other LUNs...]
c2::200500a0b817c7b1,11        disk         connected    configured   unknown
c2::200500a0b817c7b1,31        disk         connected    unconfigured unknown
c3                             fc-fabric    connected    configured   unknown
c3::10000000c955c58a           unknown      connected    unconfigured unknown
c3::200400a0b817c7b1,0         disk         connected    configured   unknown
[...Other LUNs...]
c3::200400a0b817c7b1,11        disk         connected    configured   unknown
c3::200400a0b817c7b1,12        disk         connected    configured   unusable   <----
c3::200400a0b817c7b1,31        disk         connected    configured   unknown
c3::200500a0b817c7b1,0         disk         connected    configured   unknown
[...Other LUNs...]
c3::200500a0b817c7b1,11        disk         connected    configured   unknown
c3::200500a0b817c7b1,31        disk         connected    configured   unknownI've cut out LUNs 1 through 10 for brevity, but there are no holes in the sequence. Each LUN can be seen a total of four times... once for each controller on each port on the HBA. All except LUN 12, which only shows up twice, both associated with one controller. Also the disk is marked "unusable" while the working ones are "unknown". I don't know how cfgadm makes this determination. LUN 31 is actually some odd 16mb virtual device within the SAN that looks like a disk, but isn't usable.
We've scheduled a reboot -r for tomorrow morning, just because it's the least-effort and quickest maybe-fix, but it doesn't seem like it should be necessary. The machine is slightly behind on its patches (I just got the okay to put a patch run on the train...) but isn't ancient. I wish I had mpathadm, but this release doesn't have it and upgrading to the newest Solaris isn't feasible at the moment.
Any suggestions for non-reboot things to try?
The format command will not create device nodes for LUN 12, nor will devfsadm do anything.
Anyone have any suggestions where to start? There's nothing obviously different about LUN 12 compared to the rest in the SAN management interface.

We eventually discovered the problem: The LUN was mapped to the host, not the host group.
Why that matters is still under investigation... it should have worked fine. There are a number of other LUNs mapped to the host, and those work fine. We discovered this problem when we discovered some other LUNs that were in the host group as well, and ceased working when moved to the host. None of the LUNs are visibly different from the rest in configuration... something odd is going on, but Solaris itself isn't to blame.

Cannot see EMC PowerPath devices from ASM instance on Solaris 10 x86

Hello,
I'm trying to use EMC PowerPath devices as ASM disks, but cannot see any usable disk
from the ASM instance.
My configuration:
Hardware: Sun X4600M2
Solaris 10 8/07 x86_64
EMC PowerPath 5.0.2_b030
Oracle 10.2.0.1.0
The PP devices are /dev/rdsk/emcpower* which are softlinks to the correpsonding /devices/pseudo/emcp*.
Since I know that these devices must have suitable permissions, I've set ownership and
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/dev/rdsk/emcpower* softlinks and fetch the ones with sufficient permissions. But nonetheless
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I've just read some recommendations of using slice 6 of the disk with partition type 'usr', but
this seems to me quite superficial. I would like to use simply slice (=partition) 0 starting from
cylinder 1.
I would be very glad for any solution.
Best regards
Udo

Problem solved.
After some tests with plain files instead of devices via undocumented parameter
asmallow_only_raw_disks=false in order to check ASM functionality,
I've finally created new node devices only for oracle (and set_asm_allow... back to true).
original EMC PowerPath pseudo devices (e.g.):
-bash-3.00$ ls -l /devices/pseudo/emcp@13:a,raw
crw------- 1 root sys 215, 832 Dec 10 15:29 /devices/pseudo/emcp@13:a,raw
corresponding new character device with proper ownership and permissions:
-bash-3.00$ ls -l /u01/app/ora-dev/raw/emcp13a
crw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 215, 832 Dec 10 14:56 /u01/app/ora-dev/raw/emcp13a
With *.asm_diskstring='/u01/app/ora-dev/raw/emcp*' in ASM-instance's init.ora,
I was able to see the devices via select * from v$asm_disk and could create the
ASM diskgroups.
Regards
Udo

Mpxio in solaris

HI,
What is mpxio?
how to disbale mpxio in soalirs?

Hi,
What is mpxio?mpxio is an inbuilt multipathing software avaialble in solaris which is used to manage Disk Arrays which are connected across storage.
how to disbale mpxio in soalirs?comment out entry *"mpxio-disable="no"* in file /kernel/drv/fp.con
Regards,
X A H E E R

Temporarily disable STMS/MPXIO for maintenance

Hi-
Looking for advice. I have six active/active arrays using STMS/MPXIO, Sun/Qlogic FC4 hbas and V40z's running S10_U3 x86. Each array has 84 LUNs, with 8 paths, presented to around 20 hosts. Periodically I need to bring down one of the arrays for maintenance (firmware upgrades). When the array is offline STMS/MPXIO generates lots of inquiriy traffic trying to get the paths back online. During a particulary nasty maintenance cycle, my Oracle RAC system (connected thru the same SAN) paniced since it was taking too long to get to the Oracle device.
During my maintnenance cycles I'd like to disable MPXIO for the particular array, so that the retry/inquiry traffic is suppressed and will allow my other arrays to continue production.
I think I could use luxadm disable /dev/rdsk/cXtYdZs2 for the mpxio devices of all luns in that array (create a sceript to do this) and follow up with an enable after the work is done.
I'd like to know if anyone has done something like this and if it is also something I could do with the new mpathadm command that is/will replace the luxadm command.
Thanks
Dom Burns

See Cloud Control Administrator’s Guide: 1.3.6 Blackouts
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24628_01/doc.121/e24473.pdf

Load balancing in powerpath 4.x on solaris 9

Hello,
I have installed powerpath on solaris 9.
How to enable multipathing and load balancing?
1) /etc/powercf -q;
2) /etc/powermt load;
3) /etc/powermt config;
4) init q;
5) /etc/powermt display
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Would it be sufficient to change the warning about archival to an error to make it fatal?

MPxIO-disk physical location in V890

Hi All,
How can I determine the slot position for a disk in a V890 when
using MPxIO. The output from format is:
0. c4t200000186273C6A2d0 <SUN146G cyl 14087 alt 2 hd 24 sec 848>
/scsi_vhci/ssd@g200000186273c6a2
1. c4t200000186273D7CDd0 <SUN146G cyl 14087 alt 2 hd 24 sec 848>
/scsi_vhci/ssd@g200000186273d7cd
2. c4t200000186273D69Ad0 <SUN146G cyl 14087 alt 2 hd 24 sec 848>
/scsi_vhci/ssd@g200000186273d69a
3. c4t200000186273D147d0 <SUN146G cyl 14087 alt 2 hd 24 sec 848>
/scsi_vhci/ssd@g200000186273d147
A snip from prtconf -v shows a target number=3 for g200000186273d7cd
Does this tell me that disk 1 from format is in slot 3 (0-3) ?
TIA
Ulf
Paths from multipath bus adapters:
fp#3 (online)
name='node-wwn' type=byte items=8
value=20.00.00.18.62.73.d7.cd
name='port-wwn' type=byte items=8
value=21.00.00.18.62.73.d7.cd
name='target-port' type=string items=1
value='210000186273d7cd'
--> name='target' type=int items=1
--> value=00000003
name='lun' type=int items=1
value=00000000
name='sam-lun' type=int64 items=1
value=0000000000000000
name='path-class' type=string items=1
value='primary'

luxadm has hooks for v880/890's. The internal enclosure(s) are listed in 'ls -l /dev/es'. So a 'luxadm display /dev/es/ses0' will display something similar to :
# luxadm display /dev/es/ses0
SUNWGS INT FCBPL
DISK STATUS
SLOT DISKS (Node WWN)
0 On (O.K.) 20000014c3170198
1 On (O.K.) 20000014c314f432
2 On (O.K.) 20000014c314f2ba
3 On (O.K.) 20000014c314f784
4 On (O.K.) 20000014c314fcbb
5 On (O.K.) 20000014c314fd37
6 On (Login failed)
7 On (Login failed)
8 On (Login failed)
9 On (Login failed)
10 On (Login failed)
11 On (Login failed)
<snipped>
Another nice thing to do is to "blink your LED"
From format I pulled the WWN for disk 1
<snip>
AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
0. c1t0d0 <SUN146G cyl 14087 alt 2 hd 24 sec 848>
/pci@8,600000/SUNW,qlc@2/fp@0,0/ssd@w21000014c3170198,0
1. c1t1d0 <SUN146G cyl 14087 alt 2 hd 24 sec 848> mirror
/pci@8,600000/SUNW,qlc@2/fp@0,0/ssd@w21000014c314f432,0
<snip>
Then ran 'luxadm led_blink 21000014c314f432'
This will flash the disk icon LED on your v890's disk of choise.
Have fun,
Tom de

Mpxio vs powerpath

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