PowerVault 660F on Windows 2003 Ent. DiskAdministrator Problems

I'm trying to get a 650F to work with in Windows 2003 but find out that I need that SAN 5.3.  If anyone know how can I obtain or download this solution, that would be very very helpful. 

Mike, I think you need to upgrade your 660F firmware to version 7.82 for Windows 2003 to work with PV660F.

Thanks,

Unbredant

To get the 5.3 update, you must call Dell.

Sorry, I dont believe the 650 will support 2003, but the 660 will.

Richard

I dont belive that dell upgrade your SAN to SAN 5.3.

I am not able to order this. I trying this more than 2 moths.

Jan

I give up a long time ago...

Moving straight to EMC instead of DELL...

 

Unbredant

yes, giving up here is the best you can do - i tried to get the firmware only (v 7.8x), not even asking for the entire cd v. 5.3 - i have spent i think a few thousand bucks phoning with dell supports and accountmanagers all around the world - i guess for that money i paid on phonecosts i can buy some other vendors solution (at least finance most part of it)

but ...

dell is refusing to post this firmware on their website (they instead keep the old 7.51 online there) and is also refusing to hand out that firmware to anyone obviously - only way to get it is to order (and pay a f*** huge extra amount of money to them) a full updgrade installation by a dell technician (or whoever they send to do it, because what i have seen so far, those sents people are not necessarily capable of anything)

I am really dissapointed, having paid a huge amount this year for purchases, and not getting a simple firmware file form them ...
and my planned order of 60 workstations next month: they can forget it - hp gets the deal instead !

bett think twice before investing in dell hardware in future

Thanks for your input.  I managed to get my Dell 660F working in 2003 and amazingly enough it work s well.   I am still opting to pay 3000 bucks for the updated files.  The are sending a tech. out to our site to install it later this month. 

 

 

-M

 

Couldn't agree with this more.  Spent awhile on the phones with the Dell Tech's only to find out that there is no difference between SAN 5.0 and 5.3, apparently from what I was told is the same as all of you.  5.3 is the MEGA Bucks purchase for a tech to come out and give up the secret of how to install the software on the SAN.  funny, What are the megabucks for that you pay in Gold support coverage.  I'm severly disappointed that dell does not post the controller upgrades, v7.8x and the StorageC v5.0.1.2 which is what is really needed to get the 2003 running on the san.  Only problem is, how the heck do you change your Array configuration around, and monitor a disk outage without a full version of the Array manager to mange the 660 in windows 2003?? 

This seems to be an issue with DELL right now and Windows 2003. Personally I think it is a ploy to get all of persons owning 660-650 lines to upgrade to the CX line of SAN equipment.

I also discussed with support about having a tech come out and "install" the latest SAN software on a 2003 machine. I guess documenting the known issues with the software was just-a-little to difficult for them to pull off. Knowing which magic check-box to hit during the install is the key.

This situation for us has become SO bad that I will not be suggesting that we purchase any new products from DELL in the future.

MY best advice is to first watch your 2003 SAN install like a hawk, there is no telling what type of BAD interaction there would be with the SAN HBA drivers in a 2003 clustered environment. And if there is, good luck dealing DELL support. Next would be for anyone else just stay with 2000 until they have decided to do the right thing with 2003.

Anyone know how he got this to work?

I have been haggling with Dell for some time now trying to get support for Win2K3 and the old Dell PowerVault 660f/224f/51f platform.  They no longer support this product unfortunately.  In order to get Win2K3 to connect to these containers, I had to go QLogic for software support.  They have the QLDirect driver available for Win2K/2K3, which allows failover/load-balance support.  They also have their own software package that basically does the job of Dell's StorageC.  It is called SANSurfer.  It will run on Win2K/2K3 and I believe it has an agent for Netware servers as well.  It has a nice GUI which gives you a lot of control.  QLogic also has the latest drivers and BIOS versions for the QLA2200/2300 HBA cards for numerous operating systems.

I have been able to use these components from QLogic, as well as the Open Manage Array Manager software from Dell's site, to get all my servers (Win2K and Win2K3) connected into my SAN.

Again, this is NOT supported by Dell, and doing this will be at your own risk.

One word of warning, by default, when I first installed SANSurfer and connected my servers, they were all seeing EVERY LUN in the SAN, and it caused some yuckiness in Windows since multiple servers were trying to access the same data and MBRs.  Make sure you have the correct LUN masking setup in SANSurfer!  PLEASE TEST WITH NON-PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT!

Hope all goes well with your SAN config!