Hpe

Some weeks ago, HP has published an updated version of their HP Service Pack for ProLiant (SPP). The SPP 2015.04.0 has added support for

• new HP ProLiant servers and options,
• support for Red Had Enterprise Linux 6.6, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, VMware vSphere 5.5 U2 and (of course) VMware vSphere 6.0,
• HP Smart Update Manager v7.2.0 was added,
• the HP USB Key Utility for Windows v2.0.0.0 can now handle downloads greater than 4GB (important, because this release may not fit on a standard DVD media…)
• select Linux firmware components is now available in rpm format

In addition, the SPP covers two important customer advisories:

When talking to SMB customers, most of them don’t want to talk about their backup strategy. It’s paradox: They know that data loss can ruin their business, but they don’t want to invest money into a fully tested recovery concept (I try to avoid the word “backup concept” - Recovery is the key). Because of tight budgets and lacking knowledge, many customers use traditional concepts in a virtualized world. This often ends  in traditional backup applications with agents deployed into guest OS, and backups that are written to tape (or worse: On USB disks). If you ask a customer “Why do you store your data on tape?”, only a few argue with costs per GB or performance. Most the customer argue with something like

A free StoreOnce VSA, like the well known 1 TB StoreVirtual VSA? That would be too cool to be real. But it is real! Since February, HP offers a free 1 TB version of their StoreOnce VSA. I totally missed this announcement, but thanks to Calvin Zito I noticed it today:

Can you protect your data for free? Introducing the new free 1TB StoreOnce VSA http://t.co/71464n0iZp

— IT Godfather (@CalvinZito) April 19, 2015

The link leads to another blog post from Ashwin Shetty (Can you protect your data for free? Introducing the new free 1TB StoreOnce VSA), in which he provides more information about the free 1 TB StoreOnce VSA.

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). But in this case I had to deal with it.

The next step is to connect the Synology DS414slim to my lab network. I use two HP 1910 Switches in my lab, a 8 Port and a 24 Port model. The Synology DS414slim has two 1 GbE ports, which can configured in different ways. I wanted to use both ports actively, to I decided to create a bond.

Create a bond

Browse to the admin website and go to Control Panel > Network > Network Interfaces and select “Create”. Then select “Create Bond”.

After installing the Data Protector patch bundle 8.13, you may ran into this error when trying to restore data from a HP StoreOnce appliance.

[Normal] From: RSM@dpcm.lab.local ""  Time: 04.12.2014 09:13:10
	Restore session 2014/12/04-8 started.

[Normal] From: RMA@fileserver.lab.local "D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]"  Time: 04.12.2014 09:13:12
	STARTING Media Agent "D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]"

[Normal] From: RMA@fileserver.lab.local "D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]"  Time: 04.12.2014 09:13:13
	Loading medium from slot 192.168.200.101Store_1257902bf_54796efc_04f4_005c to device D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]

[Major] From: RMA@fileserver.lab.local "D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]"  Time: 04.12.2014 09:13:15
[90:52]  	192.168.200.101Store_1257902bf_54796efc_04f4_005c
	Cannot read from device (JSONizer error: Device read failure)

[Normal] From: RMA@fileserver.lab.local "D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]"  Time: 04.12.2014 09:13:15
	Unloading medium to slot \\192.168.200.101\Store_1\257902bf_54796efc_04f4_005c from device D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]

[Normal] From: RMA@fileserver.lab.local "D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]"  Time: 04.12.2014 09:13:15
	ABORTED Media Agent "D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]"

[Normal] From: RSM@dpcm.lab.local ""  Time: 04.12.2014 09:13:15

	Restore Statistics:
          
		Session Queuing Time (hours)         0,00        
		------------------------------------------- 
		Completed Disk Agents ........          0          
		Failed Disk Agents ...........          1          
		Aborted Disk Agents ..........          0          
		------------------------------------------- 
		Disk Agents Total  ...........          1          
		===========================================      
		Completed Media Agents .......          0          
		Failed Media Agents ..........          0          
		Aborted Media Agents .........          1          
		------------------------------------------- 
		Media Agents Total  ..........          1          
		===========================================      
		Mbytes Total .................       0 MB        
		Used Media Total .............          1          
		Disk Agent Errors Total ......          0

This problem is known and it is described in QCCR2A56465. A fix is available (new BMA, CMA, MMA and RMA binaries). Simply open a service request and ask for the fix. Make sure that you add a copy of the session messages or a screenshot to the service request.

This applies to upgrades from Data Protector 6.x and 7.x to 8.x and 9.x.

It seems that today is my debugging day… Yesterday I performed a Data Protector update from 7.03 to 8.13. During this update, the Data Protector IDB is migrated to another database format. Last night the backups went smoothly, but today I noticed that two old Detail Catalog Binary File (DCBF) directories were still referenced in the HP Data Protector IDB.

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

While preparing for a VMware vSphere 5.5 update at a customer of mine, I stumbled over VMware KB2085618 (ESXi host cannot initiate vMotion or enable services and reports the error: Heap globalCartel-1 already at its maximum size.Cannot expand.). I checked the HP AMS version in the latest HP custom ESXi image and found out, that version hp-ams-esx-550.10.0.0-18.1198610 is included (source). Unfortunately the bug is not fixed in 10.0.0, but it’s fixed in 10.0.1 (source).

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. Deduplication on primary storage is nothing new, but the way how HP 3PAR doing it, is really cool. It’s not a post-process, like NetApps deduplication technology. With HP 3PAR, deduplication happens when data enters the array. I took this figure from a HP whitepaper. It shows in a simple way what enables HP 3PAR to do in-line deduplication: The 3PAR GEN4 ASIC (Who has criticised 3PAR for using custom ASICs…?). Thin Deduplication is in line with the other 3PAR thin technologies.