Two 3PAR StoreServs running in a Peer Persistence setup lost the connection to the Quorum Witness appliance. The appliance is an important part of a 3PAR Peer Persistence setup, because it acts as a tie-breaker in a split-brain scenario.
While analyzing this issue, I saw this message in the 3PAR Management Console:
Patrick Terlisten/ vcloudnine.de/ Creative Commons CC0
In addition to that, the customer got e-mails that the 3PAR StoreServ arrays lost the connection to the Quorum Witness appliance.
Customers that use HPE 3PAR StoreServs with 3PAR OS 3.2.1 or 3.2.2 and VMware ESXi 5.5 U2 or later, might notice one or more of the following symptoms:
hosts lose connectivity to a VMFS5 datastore hosts disconnect from the vCenter VMs hang during I/O operations you see the messages like these in the vobd.log or vCenter Events tab Lost access to volume due to connectivity issues. Recovery attempt is in progress and the outcome will be reported shortly
Since monday I’m helping a customer to put two HP 3PAR StoreServ 7200c into operation. Both StoreServs came factory-installed with 3PAR OS 3.2.1 MU3, which is available since July 2015. Usually, the first thing you do is to deploy the 3PAR Service Processor (SP). These days this is (in most cases) a Virtual Service Processor (VSP). The SP is used to initialize the storage system. Later, the SP reports to HP and it’s used for maintenance tasks like shutdown the StoreServ, install updates and patches.
Some days ago I talked to a colleague from our sales team and we discussed different solutions for a customer. I will spare you the details, but we discussed different solutions and we came across PernixData FVP, HP 3PAR Adaptive Optimization, HP 3PAR Adaptive Flash Cache and DataCore SANsymphony-V. And then the question of all questions came up: “What is the difference?”.
Simplify, then add Lightness Lets talk about tiering. To make it simple: Tiering moves a block from one tier to another, depending on how often a block is accessed in a specific time.
Some days ago a colleague and I implemented a small 3-node VMware vSphere Essentials Plus cluster with a HP 3PAR StoreServ 7200c. Costs are always a sore point in SMB environments, so it should not surprise that we used iSCSI in this design. I had some doubt about using iSCSI with a HP 3PAR StoreServ, mostly because of the performance and complexity. IMHO iSCSI is more complex to implement then Fibre Channel (FC).
HP has brushed up the StoreServ 7000 series and updated the StoreServ 7200 and 7400 models. HP also added a new model to the 7000 series: The StoreServ 7440c.
New 3PAR StoreServ models:
Model 3PAR StoreServ 7200c 3PAR StoreServ 7400c 3PAR StoreServ 7440c Nodes 2 2 or 4 2 or 4 CPUs 2x 6-Core 1,8 GHz 2x or 4x 6-Core 1,8 GHz 2x or 4x 8-Core 2,3 GHz Gen4 ASICs 2 2 or 4 2 or 4 On-Node Cache 40 GB 48 - 96 GB 96 - 192 GB Max Drives 8 - 240 (max 120 SSDs) 8 – 576 (max 240 SSDs) 8 - 960 (max 240 SSDs) Max Enclosures 0 - 9 0 - 22 0 - 38 Old 3PAR StoreServ models
On October 28 2014 HP has published HP 3PAR OS 3.2.1 MU1, the first maintenance update for HP 3PAR OS 3.2.1. Beside some fixes, HP enabled in-line deduplication (Thin Deduplication) on all the systems with 3PAR GEN4 ASIC (StoreServ 7000 and 10000). Thin Deduplication does not require any license! It’s included in the base license and every customer can use it without spending money for it.
Thin Deduplication In-line deduplication is awesome, congrats to HP for making this possible.
Some days ago I wrote two blog posts (part I and part II) about VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) with HP 3PAR Peer Persistence. Because I wrote about it in the first of the two blog posts, allow me to take a short description, what Peer Persistence is and what it does, from that blog post:
HP 3PAR Peer Persistence adds functionalities to HP 3PAR Remote Copy software and HP 3PAR OS, that two 3PAR storage systems form a nearly continuous storage system.
The first part of this (short) blog series covered the basics of VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) with HP 3PAR Peer Persistence. This, the second, part will cover the basic tasks to configure Peer Persistence. Please note that this blog post relies on the features and supported configurations of 3PAR OS 3.1.3! This is essential to know, because 3.1.3 got some important enhancements in respect of 3PAR Remote Copy.
The title of this blog post mentions two terms that have to be explained. First, a VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (or VMware vMSC) is a configuration of a VMware vSphere cluster, that is based on a a stretched storage cluster. Secondly, HP 3PAR Peer Persistence adds functionalities to HP 3PAR Remote Copy software and HP 3PAR OS, that two 3PAR storage systems form a nearly continuous storage system. HP 3PAR Peer Persistence allows you, to create a VMware vMSC configuration and to achieve a new quality of availability and reliability.
