HP StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform Administrator Guide (5697-0934, May 2011)

To access this executable, click the Browse to ForceActive Utility link on the opening screen of the
Virtualization Services Manager CD.
This utility is used to recover two operations:
1. The VSM on the surviving site needs to become the active VSM of the domain (if it was passive
before the failure).
2. Access is resumed to the virtual disk data by using the surviving mirror task and the DPM.
By default with the SVSP solution, a passive VSM stops the boot process and opens the recovery
tab in the VSM Monitor if one of the boot disks is missing. VSM also stops the boot process if one
of the synchronous mirror tasks of the setup virtual disks is failed. These are the exact conditions
that a passive VSM would experience if the other site fails. In both cases the VSM waits for approval
to continue the boot process. The VSM waits for the user input because it cannot distinguish between
a split-brain situation caused by broken communication links (both IP and Fibre Channel), where
the other VSM is active and working with a “missing” boot disk, and a real site failure where the
other VSM and missing disk are nonfunctional. A user needs to validate that the second VSM is
dead and allow the surviving VSM to become active despite the missing boot disks by using the
interface of the recovery tab in VSM Monitor.
The ForceActive utility:
• Allows the passive VSM to become active despite missing boot disks (like in the event of site
failure).
• Automatically recovers the synchronous mirror group by executing ForceResume. ForceResume
recovers the failed synchronous mirror groups by appointing the surviving DPM as the active
DPM for all failed groups, and makes it expose the data of the surviving mirror task.
• Sends the recovery enablement to the VSM. If the VSM is not ready to accept the command
at the particular time, the utility retries every 5 seconds until the VSM reports that there is an
active VSM for the domain. (While trying to recover from failure, the VSM alternates between
stopped and passive states and will not accept the commands when in a stopped state). If an
external application triggers the execution of the ForceActive utility, it should retry the operation
after 2 minutes if need. The ForceActive utility takes care of the retries, should they be needed.
Using the ForceActive command
The ForceActive utility is executed without having to provide a user name and password. This is
because there is not an active VSM to authenticate users. To minimize the risk, place the utility on
the VSM server itself, and trigger its execution by remote connection over SSH.
The command syntax is:
• To display the help for the ForceActive utility, run ForceActive.exe –h from a command
prompt.
• Use ForceActive –sm if you want to recover all the synchronous mirror groups automatically,
after bringing the VSM online.
• To view the output messages that the utility generates, redirect them into an external output
file, for example, ForceActive > out.log.
In order for a client to send a ForceActive command to the VSM from a remote computer, the client
needs to establish SSL communication with the VSM. The ForceActive utility reads the location of
the encryption key for SSL communication from an environmental variable that must be created
and configured on the computer that executes the command. The environmental variable name is
SSL_CERT_FILE and it needs to point to the location of the ca.cer file on the computer. The
ca.cer file is one of the extra files that are provided with the ForceActive utility to enable execution
from a remote computer.
You can set up environmental variables on Windows by selecting Control Panel > System >
Advanced System settings > Advanced > Environment variables. Click New to add a new system
variable and set its name and value.
94 Site failure recovery with synchronous mirroring