Help with VMAX Auto Provisioning Groups

what are you trying to do Allen ?

You sound too much like me dynamox. What you are really saying is the same thing I try to say politely to our business users: "Don't ask me how to implement the solution you think is right.... tell me what the problem is and we'll come up with the correct way of addressing it"

There are three distinct situations I'm trying to address with this:

1. Gatekeeper devices. We have always had gatekeeper devices mapped down each FA that needs them. When a dual attached host that requires GKs is masked to our DMX3s we do the masking and mapping in such a way that the host only sees certain GKs down each path. Data devices are multipathed but GKs are not. I'm not sure if it creates problems or not now that we use Autoprovisioning and the GKs get automatically mapped down the other FA path as well so they all appear as dual pathed on the host (and have to be managed as such).
   
2. DR device management. We have Gold Copy clones of all our R2 devices. Normally the DR hosts are masked to see the R2s to simplify DR activation. For a DR test we need to unmask the R2s and mask in the clones. This would be easy to do by replacing the R2 Storage Group with the clone Storage Group in the Masking View. The problem is that we have a lot of this to get through. Mapping takes a lot longer than masking. There is no good reason to unmap and remap these devices just to change the masking.
   
3. Our iSeries (AS/400) environament has a complicated masking scheme where some devices are single pathed and visible only on specific FA ports. This is not at all easy to replicate if the autoprovisioning changes the mapping on the fly.
   

What it really comes down to is that i would like to be able to take advantage of the masking functionality of auotprovisioning without being forced to "take advantage" of the mapping.

Any thoughts?

The option of making different Masking views and swinging the Initiator Group back and forth sounds good on the surface. When I try to create a Masking View in SMC without an Initiator Group it gives me an error though. Is this something you have tried? It sounds like it could potentially avoid the mapping/unmapping issue and be just as easy to work with as swapping multiple Storage Groups in an out of a single Masking View.

i have not tried it ..if it's giving you an error, create a dummy initiator group with some bogus WWNs.  Let me think about AS400 situation ..that one is a head scratcher.

Well we are making progress. If there are no longer issues with multipathed GKs than I'm happier than I was. It also means that I can cut down on the number of GKs required in some cases since I always account for the possibility of losing one path.

The option of making different Masking views and swinging the Initiator Group back and forth sounds good on the surface. When I try to create a Masking View in SMC without an Initiator Group it gives me an error though. Is this something you have tried? It sounds like it could potentially avoid the mapping/unmapping issue and be just as easy to work with as swapping multiple Storage Groups in an out of a single Masking View.

With the AS/400s, each host has a combination of devices that have to be seen down different multiple paths and some down single paths (the load source devices). AS/400 is NOT easy to work with on the SAN. There is a limitation of 16 devices visible down any one path (initiator) so my hosts actually have 6 HBA ports each that connect up to various FA ports on the DMX3 (for now). Two of those HBAs have to see one device each down a single path and the rest of the devices down both paths. The other 4 HBAs see the rest of the devices down two paths. Trust me when I say the spreadsheet to figure out the zoning, mapping, and masking in the first place still gives me headaches when I just see the file name (let alone open it up).

Is anyone out there doing AS/400 hosts on a VMAX? I can probably get away with another two years before I HAVE to move them over from the DMX3, but after that I have no choice (unless we switch to another disk vendor )

Hi,

I think it is always my interest to use symcli and then create groups for storage devices, ports and intiator and then add them tothe view.

Because java based programs always show some monkey actions and we need to wait. Good thing with the 587.c we can run multiple scripts/commands ata time and no issues else if it was like 4772 then we shouls call emc and kill our sessions.

HI Allen,

Dynamox is correct about creating two masking views (one for Data devices and other one for Gatekeepers) to fix your multipathed gatekeeper issue. masking view for gatekeeper should have only one FA port in port group.

But if you have PP then you need not to worry about syscall issue as pointed by Dyanmox,

regards,

Saurabh

Govinda, when I started learning Symm, i used only cli and was reluctant to use SMC but now its the other way around I enjoy working through SMC now..it makes life so simple but java is still an issue..

Hi Govinda, Do you have any idea about a single symcli comand that can create regular devices and add it to storage group or any other group.

there is no single symcli command to do that. symconfigure will take you as far as creating symdev and bind them to a pool. After that it's a couple of symaccess commands depending if you are provisioning to an existing host or new host.