HP Matrix Operating Environment and HP Storage Provisioning Manager support for port groups

Technical white paper | Matrix OE and SPM

</ArrayPortWhiteList>

</ArrayPortWhiteLists>

</Configuration>

Defining Port Groups

Defining port groups is a matter of creating an appropriate Configuration.xml file within the directory, <SPM

install location>\state\storageArrayBridge. Examples of port group Configuration.xml files can

be seen in the section, Port Group definition file examples.

Two key factors determine what should be in this file:

1. The FC (Fibre Channel) network topology. The steps to determine this topology can be found below in the section,

Identifying network topology below.

2. Any local administrative policies governing controller port usage

Note that these policies may include considerations such as:

· If zoning must be one-to-one, one-to-two, or higher zoning. (server WWN to controller port(s) )

(The whitepaper, Best practices for HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage with the HP Matrix Operating Environment and

SAN configurations, discusses this is more detail.)

· If some controller ports need to be dedicated for certain types of servers

Within a given fabric/network, these policies will determine how the controller ports are grouped into port groups.

When this Configuration.xml file is defined and copied into the previously specified directory, SPM will start using

port groups for zoning on all new SPM service creations and activations. Initially, it will automatically select port groups

based on the least used port policy. Administrators can then manually override these selections by using the provided port

group selection script, Rezone.ps1. See the Manually Selecting Port Groups section.

Identifying network topology

Since zoning takes place within a fabric/network, and port groups determine zoning, all controller ports within a given port

group must be from the same network. (It doesn’t make sense to zone for a controller port that is on a different switch.)

SPM can be used to determine which controller ports are visible on which networks. The steps to do this are:

1. Log into the SPM user interface and select

Network

in the navigation pane on the left.

2. For each network in the list, click on its link to bring up the network details.

3. Within the network details, click on the

Connected Arrays

tab to show the list of arrays that are connected to this

network.

4. For each Array in the “Array connected to…” table, click on its line (but not its name/link). This will bring up the list

of controller ports from the array that is connected to this network.