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April 11th, 2013 15:00
Initiator Address Changes Itself
I'm noticing a troubling issue on the PS4000 SAN.
My original setup was two volumes:
Volume1 connected to 10.0.12.204 and 10.0.12.214
Volume2 connected to 10.0.12.224 and 10.0.12.234
And this had been working fine for months.
A couple days ago users started to complain about performance. I started to look into this.
I noticed both volumes are now connected to 10.0.12.224 and 10.0.12.234. 204 and 214 don't have any sessions.
On Volume1 I can log off from 224 and re-connect to 204, but within a few seconds it drops 204 and goes back to 224. I can't get it to stick back to the way it was originally set up, distributed across the four adapters.
Anyone see something like this before, and can offer some suggestions? I'm thinking next time I can schedule downtime (Sunday overnight) I'll restart the controller... Anything else?
TIA!
Davan
28 Posts
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April 12th, 2013 08:00
Sorry, I should have clarified, the four IP addresses given are the storage NICs in the server that is running the iSCSI initiator. Having four NICs, two connected per volume, is overkill for a 2GB SAN but has made performance tracking and troubleshooting much easier, since I can easily see how much bandwidth is going to each of the two volumes.
Davan
28 Posts
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April 12th, 2013 11:00
I just did a test. I created a third volume on the SAN. I was able to connect the two un-used NICs to that new volume.
However, I still can't connect those two NICs to any of the original two volumes.
In the iSCSI initiator, I select Logon to target, check the box for enabling multipathing, then in the dropdown for Source IP, I can pick any of the four cards, and it seems to work but a few seconds later the SAN seems to over-ride that selection and goes back to 224 and 234.
Davan
28 Posts
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April 12th, 2013 11:00
No ESX here. This is simply a physical Windows Server box with a bunch of network cards in it.
I updated the SAN to the latest firmware just a couple months ago. It had been working fine in this configuration until a few days ago.
Firmware version 5.2.6 with the Dell MPIO module installed on the Windows server.
Like I said, I know that four NICs isn't necessary on the 2GB SAN, but it is extremely useful when tuning performance. I have our busiest SQL databases in these two volumes, and it is important for me to be able to see how much bandwidth each volume/database is consuming, separately.
Davan
28 Posts
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April 12th, 2013 14:00
Thanks, Don. I appreciate the replies.