creating gatekeeper devices in VMAX

Hello, The team is going to move this thread to the Support Forums where it can be addressed.

Thanks,

Stephanie

Hello, We have moved your question to the Symmetrix Support Forums where it can be addressed.

Thanks,

Bob.

you can create gatekeepers the following way:

1) If you have solutions enabler version 7.3+ you can run this command

symconfigure -sid 123 -cmd "create gatekeeper count=6 emulation=FBA;" commit

2) if you have an older version of SE then you can run this command:

symconfigure -sid 123 -cmd "create dev count=6,size=3,emulation=FBA,config=2-Way-Mir,disk_group=3;" commit

in this command you need to provide correct disk_group

make sure to use dedicated gatekeepers for applications that are doing a lot of symcli calls like SMC/SPA, Solutions enabler management hosts, EMC ControlCenter.

Once i have those GK devices created, do I need to use the symgate command to have them defined ? What are the next steps after the create the GK devices by method 2 ?

present them to the host and run symgate to define them, this will ensure that symcli will use those devices first when talking to the array.

Once a dev created using "create gatekeeper" command, Symm enables the gatekeeper enquiry flag on the device and it will automatically be used as Gatekeeper.

regards,
Saurabh

I have SE 7.2. I have created GK devices as normal devices using symconfigure and size 3 cyl. Now if i put those devices in a storage group and present it to host, will it be automatically be taking as GK devices by my host ?

Is that the correct step i am following ?

Yes, but make sure that gatekeeper are presented from a single path only. if you have presented it from multiple paths then you must use powerpath software.

is the host physical or virtual ? Once devices are discovered on the host, run symgate define command

Multipathing gatekeepers is only supported with PowerPath. 3rd party multi-pathing software is not supported for gatekeepers unless they are restricted to a single path due to the possibility of the situation that Dynamox described above occuring.

However, with the 5876 Enginuity release and Solutions Enabler 7.4, the multi-pathing of gatekeepers with multi-pathing software other than PowerPath is supported such as VMware's NMP Round Robin.

you might experience issues with SE functionality, syscall might go out one path and come back using the other ..and SE gets confused. Is this on DMX or VMAX ?

Saurabh/Dynamox:

What is the impact if I have more than 1 FA Ports Mapped? I dont have PowerPath but we do have Native Multipath running on my HP-UX Solutions Enabler. I should be fine, correct?

-KGD

Mine is a VMAX, Dynamox.

Yeah that would be fine. As long as host only has one active path to the GK itself it is fine.

well , now that i think about it, there is only one path to the gatekeeper devices

1) Lets say i have a host with 2 HBAs and is it's zonned like this:

HBA1 - 8G:0 , 5G:0

HBA2 - 8E:0 , 5E:0

port group "pg_productionHPUX" - 8G:0,8E:0,5G:0,5E:0

initiator group "ig_hostHPUX" - 1000000000000023 , 1000000000000024

so when i present storage i will have 4 paths to each devices.

Now that i have some devices presented with 4 paths, i also need to present some gatekeepers to this system.

1) I create new port group with just one port (although that port is already zoned to this host but this will allow me not to do any additional zoning and dedicate ports just for gatekeepers)

port group "pg_gatekeepersonly"  - 8G:0

2) create storage group "sg_gatekeepersonly"

3) create new masking view - "pg_gatekeepersonly", "sg_gatekeepersonly", "ig_hostHPUX"

so what's going to happen is that our gateekeper devices will be mapped to port 8G:0 only, there will be masking entries for each HBA but who cares, because my devices are only visible through one port 8G:0

Did i miss anything ?