HP Storage Hardware Providers VDS/VSS Installation Guide (5697-1131, August 2011)

Figure 9 HP P9000 hardware provider configuration
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• HP Storage Disk Array with Business Copy and Snapshot license installed by HP. For supported
XP and P9000 models, see the HP Storage P9000 Hardware Providers Release Notes.
• Windows VDS/VSS Server running a supported Windows Server operating system. This server
manages the primary data and contains applications (such as Exchange or SQL), VDS/VSS, HP
hardware providers, and XP RAID Manager Library software. For supported operating systems,
see the hardware provider release notes.
• Optional Server 2 (another Windows server) can be connected to the array to manage VSS copies
and prevent additional demand on the VDS/VSS server. Depending on the purpose of this server,
you may also need to install the HP hardware providers, your application software, and MPIO
Full-Featured Failover.
The Optional Server (and HP hardware provider) is used to import the shadow copy volume for
operations such as consistency verification using eseutil, datamining, or /tapebackup.
Depending on the purpose of this server, you may need to install the HP hardware provider, RAID
Manager Library software, and your application software.
• Fibre Channel HBAs in each server connected to the disk array via a Fibre Channel SAN.
For VSS, in any individual server, use only HBAs from the same manufacturer. If any P9000 or
XP volumes are imported, they will be imported into ALL P9000 or XP host groups that contain a
WWN of an HBA configured in the server. If you have more than one host group with the same
WWN specified, the volume shadow copy LUN could be visible to an unrelated server. This could
be an issue when using a mix of HBAs from different vendors, since HBAs from different vendors
may have different driver parameters. This may cause a failure if the multipath software tries to
fail over I/O from one vendor's HBA to another vendor's HBA. The recommended method for
avoiding these problems is never to mix HBAs from different vendors in the same server.
• Fiber cables and fabric switch to connect the hosts to the array. (A fabric switch is optional; you
can use direct connections if you prefer.)
Installing HP hardware providers for HP P9000 disk arrays26