InfoScale™ 9.0 Dynamic Multi-Pathing Administrator's Guide - Solaris

Last Published:
Product(s): InfoScale & Storage Foundation (9.0)
Platform: Solaris
  1. Understanding DMP
    1.  
      About Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP)
    2. How DMP works
      1. How DMP monitors I/O on paths
        1.  
          Path failover mechanism
        2.  
          Subpaths Failover Group (SFG)
        3.  
          Low Impact Path Probing (LIPP)
        4.  
          I/O throttling
      2.  
        Load balancing
      3.  
        Dynamic Reconfiguration
      4.  
        DMP support for the ZFS root pool
      5.  
        About booting from DMP devices
      6. DMP in a clustered environment
        1.  
          About enabling or disabling controllers with shared disk groups
    3.  
      Multi-controller ALUA support
    4.  
      Multiple paths to disk arrays
    5.  
      Device discovery
    6.  
      Disk devices
    7. Disk device naming in DMP
      1.  
        About operating system-based naming
      2. About enclosure-based naming
        1.  
          Summary of enclosure-based naming
        2.  
          Enclosure based naming with the Array Volume Identifier (AVID) attribute
  2. Setting up DMP to manage native devices
    1.  
      About setting up DMP to manage native devices
    2.  
      Displaying the native multi-pathing configuration
    3.  
      Migrating ZFS pools to DMP
    4.  
      Migrating to DMP from EMC PowerPath
    5.  
      Migrating to DMP from Hitachi Data Link Manager (HDLM)
    6.  
      Migrating to DMP from Solaris Multiplexed I/O (MPxIO)
    7. Using Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) devices with Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM)
      1.  
        Enabling Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) devices for use with Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM)
      2.  
        Removing Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) devices from the listing of Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) disks
      3.  
        Migrating Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) disk groups on operating system devices to Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) devices
    8.  
      Enabling and disabling DMP support for the ZFS root pool
    9.  
      Adding DMP devices to an existing ZFS pool or creating a new ZFS pool
    10.  
      Removing DMP support for native devices
  3. Administering DMP
    1.  
      About enabling and disabling I/O for controllers and storage processors
    2.  
      About displaying DMP database information
    3.  
      Displaying the paths to a disk
    4.  
      Setting customized names for DMP nodes
    5. Managing DMP devices for the ZFS root pool
      1.  
        Configuring a mirror for the ZFS root pool using a DMP device
      2.  
        Updating the boot device settings
      3.  
        Using DMP devices as swap devices or dump devices
      4.  
        Cloning the boot environment with DMP
      5.  
        Creating a snapshot of an existing boot environment
    6. Administering DMP using the vxdmpadm utility
      1.  
        Retrieving information about a DMP node
      2.  
        Displaying consolidated information about the DMP nodes
      3.  
        Displaying the members of a LUN group
      4.  
        Displaying paths controlled by a DMP node, controller, enclosure, or array port
      5.  
        Displaying information about controllers
      6.  
        Displaying information about enclosures
      7.  
        Displaying information about array ports
      8.  
        User-friendly CLI outputs for ALUA arrays
      9.  
        Displaying information about devices controlled by third-party drivers
      10.  
        Displaying extended device attributes
      11.  
        Suppressing or including devices from VxVM control
      12. Gathering and displaying I/O statistics
        1.  
          Displaying cumulative I/O statistics
        2.  
          Displaying statistics for queued or erroneous I/Os
        3.  
          Examples of using the vxdmpadm iostat command
      13.  
        Setting the attributes of the paths to an enclosure
      14.  
        Displaying the redundancy level of a device or enclosure
      15.  
        Specifying the minimum number of active paths
      16.  
        Displaying the I/O policy
      17. Specifying the I/O policy
        1.  
          Scheduling I/O on the paths of an Asymmetric Active/Active or an ALUA array
        2.  
          Example of applying load balancing in a SAN
      18.  
        Disabling I/O for paths, controllers, array ports, or DMP nodes
      19.  
        Enabling I/O for paths, controllers, array ports, or DMP nodes
      20.  
        Renaming an enclosure
      21.  
        Configuring the response to I/O failures
      22.  
        Configuring the I/O throttling mechanism
      23.  
        Configuring Subpaths Failover Groups (SFG)
      24.  
        Configuring Low Impact Path Probing (LIPP)
      25.  
        Displaying recovery option values
      26.  
        Configuring DMP path restoration policies
      27.  
        Stopping the DMP path restoration thread
      28.  
        Displaying the status of the DMP path restoration thread
      29.  
        Configuring Array Policy Modules
      30.  
        Configuring latency threshold tunable for metro/geo array
  4. Administering disks
    1.  
      About disk management
    2. Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices
      1.  
        Partial device discovery
      2. About discovering disks and dynamically adding disk arrays
        1.  
          How DMP claims devices
        2.  
          Disk categories
        3.  
          Adding DMP support for a new disk array
        4.  
          Enabling discovery of new disk arrays
      3.  
        About third-party driver coexistence
      4. How to administer the Device Discovery Layer
        1.  
          Listing all the devices including iSCSI
        2.  
          Listing all the Host Bus Adapters including iSCSI
        3.  
          Listing the ports configured on a Host Bus Adapter
        4.  
          Listing the targets configured from a Host Bus Adapter or a port
        5.  
          Listing the devices configured from a Host Bus Adapter and target
        6.  
          Getting or setting the iSCSI operational parameters
        7.  
          Listing all supported disk arrays
        8.  
          Excluding support for a disk array library
        9.  
          Re-including support for an excluded disk array library
        10.  
          Listing excluded disk arrays
        11.  
          Listing disks claimed in the DISKS category
        12.  
          Displaying details about an Array Support Library
        13.  
          Adding unsupported disk arrays to the DISKS category
        14.  
          Removing disks from the DISKS category
        15.  
          Foreign devices
    3.  
      VxVM coexistence with ZFS
    4. Changing the disk device naming scheme
      1.  
        Displaying the disk-naming scheme
      2.  
        Regenerating persistent device names
      3.  
        Changing device naming for enclosures controlled by third-party drivers
      4. Simple or nopriv disks with enclosure-based naming
        1.  
          Removing the error state for simple or nopriv disks in the boot disk group
        2.  
          Removing the error state for simple or nopriv disks in non-boot disk groups
    5.  
      Discovering the association between enclosure-based disk names and OS-based disk names
  5. Dynamic Reconfiguration of devices
    1.  
      About online Dynamic Reconfiguration
    2. About the DMPDR utility
      1.  
        Using the DMPDR utility to reconfigure the LUNs associated with a server
    3. Reconfiguring a LUN online that is under DMP control using the Dynamic Reconfiguration tool
      1.  
        Removing LUNs dynamically from an existing target ID
      2.  
        Adding new LUNs dynamically to a target ID
      3.  
        Replacing LUNs dynamically from an existing target ID
      4.  
        Replacing a host bus adapter online
    4. Manually reconfiguring a LUN online that is under DMP control
      1.  
        Overview of manually reconfiguring a LUN
      2.  
        Manually removing LUNs dynamically from an existing target ID
      3.  
        Manually adding new LUNs dynamically to a new target ID
      4.  
        About detecting target ID reuse if the operating system device tree is not cleaned up
      5.  
        Scanning an operating system device tree after adding or removing LUNs
      6.  
        Manually cleaning up the operating system device tree after removing LUNs
      7.  
        Manually replacing a host bus adapter on an M5000 server
    5.  
      Changing the characteristics of a LUN from the array side
    6.  
      Upgrading the array controller firmware online
  6. Event monitoring
    1.  
      About the Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) event source daemon (vxesd)
    2.  
      Fabric Monitoring and proactive error detection
    3.  
      Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) automated device discovery
    4.  
      Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) discovery of iSCSI and SAN Fibre Channel topology
    5.  
      DMP event logging
    6.  
      Starting and stopping the Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) event source daemon
  7. Performance monitoring and tuning
    1.  
      About tuning Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) with templates
    2.  
      DMP tuning templates
    3.  
      Example DMP tuning template
    4.  
      Tuning a DMP host with a configuration attribute template
    5.  
      Managing the DMP configuration files
    6.  
      Resetting the DMP tunable parameters and attributes to the default values
    7.  
      DMP tunable parameters and attributes that are supported for templates
    8.  
      DMP tunable parameters
  8. Appendix A. DMP troubleshooting
    1.  
      Displaying extended attributes after upgrading to DMP 9.0
    2.  
      Recovering from errors when you exclude or include paths to DMP
    3.  
      Downgrading the array support
  9. Appendix B. Reference
    1.  
      Command completion for InfoScale commands

Manually removing LUNs dynamically from an existing target ID

In this case, a group of LUNs is unmapped from the host HBA ports and an operating system device scan is issued. To add subsequent LUNs seamlessly, perform additional steps to clean up the operating system device tree.

The high-level procedure and the DMP commands are generic. However, the operating system commands may vary depending on the Solaris version. For example, the following procedure uses Solaris 11 with the Leadville stack.

To remove LUNs dynamically from an existing target ID

  1. Before any dynamic reconfiguration, ensure that the dmp_cache_open tunable is set to on. This setting is the default. 
    # vxdmpadm gettune dmp_cache_open

    If the tunable is set to off, set the dmp_cache_open tunable to on.

    # vxdmpadm settune dmp_cache_open=on
  2. Identify which LUNs to remove from the host. Do one of the following:

    • Use the Storage Array Management to identify the Array Volume ID (AVID) for the LUNs.

    • If the array does not report the AVID, use the LUN index.

  3. For LUNs under VxVM, perform the following steps:

    • Evacuate the data from the LUNs using the vxevac command.

      See the vxevac(1M) online manual page.

      After the data has been evacuated, enter the following command to remove the LUNs from the disk group:

      # vxdg -g diskgroup rmdisk da-name

    • If the data has not been evacuated and the LUN is part of a subdisk or a disk group, remove the LUNs from the disk group using the following command. If the disk is part of a shared disk group, you must use the -k option to force the removal.

      # vxdg -g diskgroup -k rmdisk da-name
  4. For LUNs that are in use by ZFS, either export or destroy the zpool.
  5. Using the AVID or the LUN index, use the Storage Array Management to unmap or unmask the LUNs you identified in step 2.
  6. Remove the LUNs from the vxdisk list. Enter the following command on all nodes in a cluster:
    # vxdisk rm da-name

    This step is required. If you do not perform this step, the DMP device tree shows ghost paths.

  7. Clean up the Solaris SCSI device tree for the devices that you removed in step 6.

    This step is required. You must clean up the operating system SCSI device tree to release the SCSI target ID for reuse if a new LUN is added to the host later.

  8. Scan the operating system device tree.

  9. Use DMP to perform a device scan. You must perform this operation on all nodes in a cluster. Enter one of the following commands:
    • # vxdctl enable
    • # vxdisk scandisks
  10. Refresh the DMP device name database using the following command:
    # vxddladm assign names
  11. Verify that the LUNs were removed cleanly by answering the following questions:

    • Is the device tree clean?

      Verify that the operating system metanodes are removed from the /dev directory.

    • Were all the appropriate LUNs removed?

      Use the DMP disk reporting tools such as the vxdisk list command output to determine if the LUNs have been cleaned up successfully.

    • Is the vxdisk list output correct?

      Verify that the vxdisk list output shows the correct number of paths and does not include any ghost disks.

    If the answer to any of these questions is "No," return to step 5 and perform the required steps.

    If the answer to all of the questions is "Yes," the LUN remove operation is successful.

More Information

Manually cleaning up the operating system device tree after removing LUNs

Scanning an operating system device tree after adding or removing LUNs