Powerpath Monitoring

Question

Hi,

We currently have a monitoring setup for powerpath devices. We monitor the link status,trspassing of LUN through this and it is working with out any issues.

For the past few weeks, we had some trouble with powerpath devices and it is because of forgetting to issue "powermt save" command while adding new LUN.

We would like get a warning message if one of our admins forget to issue "powermt save" command.

As first idea this can be achived by having a master copy of "powermt display dev=all" at a location and compare the current output. Whenever our admin make changes, they should update this master file after doing "powermt save".

This method also has a drawback. If the admin update the master file without doing "powermt save" the monitoring tool may not report errors and it can be dangerous.

If any one of you know better way of doing this monitoring task, please let me know.

Thanks, Tobias

Conor · Answer

You don't mention which OS this is on, I will answer for Solaris:

It might be easier to setup monitoring on the /var/adm/messges file for 'Path dead' type errors:
emcp: [ID 801593 kern.notice] Error: All paths to Symm xxxx vol yyyy are dead.

cb

Kiran3 · Answer

can you write a wrapper script for powermt which will prompt user to save config whenever powermt check is issued?

TobiasSchuehle · Answer

First of all, thanks for your answer.But as I tried to mention for dead pathes we already have a monitoring. Now, we just want to know if the saved state in /etc/powermt.custom is the same than the current running configuration.The monitoring will be used for Solaris and HP-UX.Thanks.

Navin-Swn_9 · Answer

You can also use the Clariion LUN Trespass tool to find out how many times the LUN has trespassed.
You can get the same at EMC Service Partners Web on powerlink. Else get it from some EMC CE.
Its a very nice and easy to use tool

Kiran3 · Answer

i wonder how lun trespass tool will help here...

Navin-Swn_9 · Answer

I think Tobias wants to monitor the powerpath device's for dead paths etc.. One way is to obviously check the syslogs and find out which paths are dead.
From the array prespective LUN trespassing will also mean chances of paths on the server coming dead.
The trespass tool will thus tell us more preciesly which server/LUNS to specifically look for.

TobiasSchuehle · Answer

For clarification: we have already a monitoring for dead paths, tresspased LUNs, etc.

We just want to extend this monitoring with the capability to check if the running configuration is the same as the saved one.

dynamox · Answer

how about remote ssh command and run 'powermt save' every day.

Kiran3 · Answer

i think you can go back to your original idea...
write a script that will
- save "powermt display dev=all" output or preferably "powermt display paths" output in a file if its not there
- if file is present, run the command again and redirect output to a temp file.
- compare both files, if files are different, send a message to you or run powermt save

and now you can cron this at a frequency suitable to your needs

Navin-Swn_9 · Answer

Ohh i was not clear with the question. Doing cron scheduling is a good idea.

PowerPath

Powerpath Monitoring

Was this post helpful?