Rich Bassett
Walt McCullough
Commercial Systems Division
Site, Software and Hardware Requirements
The following is a summary of Site, Software and Hardware
requirements for support of the HP SureStore E Disk Array 12H.Device
installation and support is to be provided by HP. For detailed information
on the support and configuration of the Model 12H AutoRAID, field
support personnel should consult the updated version of the following documents:
HP SureStore E Disk Array 12H -- System Administrators Guide
for HP-UX, MPE/iX and Microsoft Windows NT
Users and Service Manual
Control Panel Quick Reference Card
These documents are located on the following external web page:
http://www.hp.com/essd/model12H_alldocs.html
NOTE: The ARMserver software will be provided as a patch for MPE/iX 6.5.
AutoRAID Configuration Requirements
Model 12H AutoRAID is supported using firmware revision 56
Controller Mode should be set to Normal
X Controller to be connected to the HP 3000, Y controller
unconnected and terminated
Rebuild priority should be set to High
Loginal Unit Number (LUN) (0) must be configured
Host Hardware/Firmware Requirements
Support will only be allowed on a dedicated SCSI bus, with no
other types of devices (homogeneous bus environment).
Daisy chaining of two or more model 12H is supported within the
recommended SCSI configuration.
NOTE: Recommended SCSI Configuration: Maximum of 15
LDEVs per SCSI bus (Maximum of 8 LDEVs for performance.) Having
9 or more LDEVs configured will cause performance degeneration under
high I/O loads.
No support for shared SCSI busses.
F/W SCSI Device Adapter Card (28696A, known as "Wizard) firmware
MUST be at level 3728 or greater
9x9 Core I/O card (A2372-60004 or A3453-60010) will be
conditionally supported with the following requirements:
Must disconnect all internal F/W SCSI drives
Must have firmware level of 3636.
Up to 8 LDEVs will be supported (Tested limit).
Ldev 1 boot will have the following conditions:
Ldev 1 capacity limited to 4 Gbytes
Host Software Requirements
The Model 12H AutoRAID is supported on the MPE/iX 6.5 operating system with the
addition of two software patches:
MPE/iX C.65.01 (6.5)
Software Patches:
The first patch contains the new TYPE manager and
changes to SDARRAY for support of the new SCSI passthru
functionality. This functionally is needed for the AutoRAID
Management (ARM) utilities.
The second patch contains the ARM utilities. This patch is
installed under the MPE/iX POSIX environment. Information on how
to install the this patch, see the MPE/iX and SureStore E Disk
Array 12H AutoRAID Manager Installation Guide
NOTE: The latest patches are available from the HP Patch web site.
The SYSGEN product ID is HPDARRAY. See Configuring
AutoRAID SCSI LUNs for MPE/iX within chapter 5 of the System
Administrators Guide for HP-UX, MPE/iX, and Microsoft Windows NT
for how to perform the SYSGEN configuration.
Host Diagnostic Support
Sysmap will identify the Model 12H AutoRAID as unsupported. For diagnostic
support, the ARM utilities will replace the current SHERLOCK diagnostic.
Note that SCSIDSK2 can still be used to perform disk trouble analysis, but this
is not a supported tool for the Model 12H AutoRAID product.
Off-line Diagnostics
There is a new off-line utility called ARDIAG that is supported within
the support media off-line (ODE) diagnostics. See chapter 7 of the HP
SureStore E Disk Array 12H System Administrators Guide for HP-UX, MPE/iX, and
Microsoft Windows NT for how to use this command.
Configuring the 12H for Performance on the HP 3000
The single X controller is the only connection to the HP 3000
supported for this release. It is recommended that you purchase the
second Y controller in case of controller failure. The second
controller will be able to take over when swapped into place, for it
maintains a copy of the current firmware and disk maps
If your 12H contains 12 18Gb disk drives we recommend configuring
each of the LUNs for 11Gb of storage. This has shown to give the best
performance versus capacity. This capacity allows for RAID1 and
available space for two hot spare disks.
Total capacity of the LUNs should not exceed 90Gb. If this capacity
is exceeded then you will trade performance with capacity.
Data Resiliency Mode should be set to Normal. Some users have
reported slow times for large restores. This problem can be corrected
by setting the Data Resiliency Mode to Performance Mode only during
the restore. Remember to reset the mode back to Normal when your
large restore is completed.
Rebuild Priority should be set to High. This may cause some
degradation in OLTP but will reduce the likelihood of encountering a
disk mechanical failure while the system is still recovering from a
previous disk mechanical failure.
TERMDSM: User Interface Change under System Diagnostics