HP Insight Management 7.3 Installation and Configuration Guide

NOTE: SPM operations result from creating a storage pool entry for fulfillment through SPM or
provisioning a logical server manually or automatically from a Matrix infrastructure orchestration
service template.
Setting Flags on EMC Director Ports
The EMC director ports that the SPM adapter uses must have fiber channel (FC) cable connections
to a SAN switch and the ACLX flag on each of these ports must be enabled.
You must enable the VSA (Volume Set Addressing) flag on the ports to support hosts running HP-UX.
To support Windows, Linux, VMware, or other operating systems, the VSA flag must be disabled
on the ports. The “Using Suitable EMC Ports for Provisioning” (page 66) section provides information
about pure and mixed mode environments, such as all ports with VSA flag enabled, some ports
with VSA flag enabled, and some ports with VSA flag disabled.
Typically, the EMC administrator sets the flags on one or more ports by using EMC native tools
(SMC and SYMCLI).
Using Suitable EMC Ports for Provisioning
The configuration outlined in the Setting EMC Director Ports section assumes equal use of all the
allowed ports. If you use HP-UX, then ensure that Matrix requests for volumes with an HP-UX host
mode are fulfilled using EMC ports, with VSA flag enabled. If all ports using Matrix/SPM support
VSA and all requests are for HP-UX host mode, then you can follow the approach mentioned in
the “Setting EMC Director Ports” (page 65) section. If some requests are for HP-UX host mode and
some are for other host modes, such as Windows or Linux, which cannot be fulfilled using ports
with VSA enabled, then you must use ports suitable for that particular operating system.
You can accomplish this by manually creating the Matrix storage pool entries and choosing the
SPM candidates from the EMC array and selecting suitable ports for each of the volume’s paths
(VSA enabled for HP-UX, VSA disabled for other host modes). This requires the administrator to
know which ports are suitable for HP-UX systems to use. If Matrix fails to find a suitable storage
pool entry, it auto-generates an entry and fulfills the storage requests through SPM. The storage
may or may not be using an appropriate port in such mixed mode environments. If you use a
wrong port, the administrator manually adjusts the storage to a suitable port and SPM re-presents
the storage using the SPM adapter for EMC Symmetrix VMAX.
NOTE: This must be detected and corrected prior to storage use.
An alternate solution is to ensure that Matrix does not auto-generate a storage pool entry, but
provides pause provisioning, if a suitable storage pool entry is not found. To do this, use storage
tags that are available at the Matrix infrastructure orchestration and storage pool level, but not at
the SPM level. A matrix service template specifies a tag, which can be either on an HP-UX or
Windows operating system and used when searching for suitable storage pool entries. The
corresponding tag is on manually created storage pool entries, but not on any resources within
SPM. The timing of applying the tag to the storage pool entry is critical. The storage pool entry
must be created and fulfilled through SPM, without the tag, by selecting the suitable storage ports.
The appropriate storage candidate is selected and the tag is applied to the storage pool entry.
The fact that the tag does not exist in SPM is the key, because it allows Matrix to pause for manual
storage provisioning, when matching storage is not found. As a result, Matrix searches for a storage
pool entry with the matching tag, using storage tag if one is found, or pausing if one is not found,
since there are no SPM candidates that are automatically returned with that storage tag. When
Matrix pauses for manual storage provisioning, the storage pool entry is manually created and
fulfilled through SPM without the tag. The tag is then applied to the storage pool entry, before
resuming the Matrix workflow. If you know the storage needs in advance, most requests are fulfilled
from the manually created storage pool entries, without delay, only pausing if there is an
unanticipated request for which there is no storage pool entry defined. These solutions assume that
the administrator knows which ports are suitable for HP-UX and for other operating systems.
66 Optional post-installation configuration