Storage support > Storage software > SAN Volume Controller (2145)

V5.1.x - IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller Restrictions

DS4000 Maintenance SVC supports concurrent ESM firmware upgrades for those DS4000 models listed as such on the "Supported Hardware List" when they are running either [Link] or later controller firmware. However, controllers running firmware levels earlier than [Link] will not be supported for concurrent ESM upgrades. Customers in this situation, who wish to gain support for concurrent ESM upgrades, will need to first upgrade the DS4000 controller firmware level to [Link]. This action is a controller firmware upgrade, not an ESM upgrade and concurrent controller firmware upgrades are already supported in conjunction with SVC. Once the controller firmware is at [Link] or later the ESM firmware can be upgraded concurrently.

Note: The ESM firmware upgrade must be done on one disk expansion enclosure at a time. A 10 minute delay from when one enclosure is upgraded to the start of the upgrade of another enclosure is required. Confirm via the Storage Manager applications "Recovery Guru" that the DS4000 status is in an optimal state before upgrading the next enclosure. If it is not, then do not continue ESM firmware upgrades until the problem is resolved.

Host Limitations Windows SAN Boot Clusters (MSCS): It is possible to SAN Boot a Microsoft Cluster subject to the following restrictions imposed by Microsoft: Windows 2000 Server clusters require that the boot disk be on a different storage bus to the cluster server disks. o On Windows 2003, clustered disks and boot disks can be presented on the same storage bus, but ONLY if the Storport driver is being used.
o

These restrictions and more are described in the Microsoft White Paper: "Microsoft Windows Clustering: Storage Area Networks". We have not tested, and therefore do not support, modifying the registry key as suggested on page 28 (which would allow boot disks and clustered disks on the same storage bus on Windows 2003 without the Storport driver).

Oracle Oracle Version and OS Oracle RAC 10g on Windows: Oracle RAC 10g on AIX: Oracle RAC 11g on AIX: Oracle RAC 10g on HPUX11.31: Oracle RAC 11g on HPUX11.31: 1 1, 2 2 1, 2 1, 2 Restrictions that apply:

Oracle RAC 10g on HPUX11.23: Oracle RAC 11g on HPUX11.23:

1, 2 1, 2

Oracle RAC 10g on Linux Host: 1, 3 Restriction 1: ASM cannot recognise the size change of the disk when SVC disk is resized unless the disk is removed from ASM and included again. Restriction 2: After an ASM disk group has successfully dropped a disk, the disk cannot be deleted from the OS. The workaround to the OS restriction is to bring down the ASM instance, delete the disk from the OS, and bring up the ASM instance again. Restriction 3: For RHEL4 set Oracle Clusterware 'misscount' parameter to a bigger one to allow SDD to do path failover first. The default miscount setting 60s is too short for SDD. We recommend to set it 90s or 120s. Command to use: crsctl set css misscount 90

SAN Fibre Networks Please refer to this document for details on how to configure a supported SAN: IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller V5.1.0 - Software Installation and Configuration Guide

SAN Routers and Fibre Channel Extenders Fibre Channel Extender Technologies: IBM will support any fibre channel extender technology provided that it is planned, installed and tested to meet the requirements specified in the Software Installation and Configuration Guide: IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller V5.1.0 - Software Installation and Configuration Guide

SAN Router Technologies:

There are distance restrictions imposed due to latency. The amount of latency which can be tolerated depends on the type of copy services being used (Metro Mirror or Global Mirror). Details of the maximum latencies supported can be found in the Software Installation and Configuration Guide: IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller V5.1.0 - Software Installation and Configuration Guide

SAN Maintenance A number of maintenance operations in SAN fabrics have been observed to occasionally cause IO errors for certain types of hosts. To avoid these errors, IO on these hosts must be quiesced prior to doing any type of SAN re-configuration activity, switch maintenance or SAN Volume Controller maintenance (see later section for Concurrent Code Load restrictions). 1. Linux RH EL 2.1 AS and 3 AS

SAN Volume Controller Software Upgrade I/O errors have occasionally been observed during cluster software upgrades with hosts running the operating system levels below. All I/O should be quiesced on these systems before a software upgrade is started and should not be restarted until the upgrade is complete. 1. Linux RH EL 2.1 AS and 3 AS 2. Solaris 9 on SBus based systems

Prior to starting a software upgrade, the SAN Volume Controller error log must be checked and any error conditions must be resolved and marked as fixed. All host paths must be online, and the SAN fabric must be fully redundant with no failed paths. If inter-cluster Remote Copy (Metro Mirror or Global Mirror) is being used, the same checks must be made on the remote clusters.

Maximum Configurations Ensure that you are familiar with the maximum configurations for SAN Volume Controller 5.1.0: Property Maximum Comments Number Cluster Properties 8 64 4 4 Arranged as four I/O groups Maximum number of nodes that can be present on the same fabric, with visibility of each other Each containing two nodes The number of counterpart SANs which are supported A cluster may partnered with up to three remote clusters. No more than four clusters may be in the same connected set Node Properties Logins per node Fibre Channel port 512 Includes logins from server HBAs, disk controller ports, SVC node ports within the same cluster and SVC node ports from remote clusters The maximum number of logical units which can be managed by SVC. The number includes disks which have not been configured into managed disk groups

Nodes per cluster Nodes per fabric I/O groups per cluster Fabrics per cluster Inter-cluster partnerships per cluster

Managed Disk Properties Managed disks (MDisks) per cluster Managed disks per managed disk group Managed disk groups per cluster Managed disk capacity Total storage

4096

128

128 2 TB 8 PB Maximum size for an individual logical unit Requires maximum extent size of

capacity manageable per cluster Virtual disks (VDisks) per cluster Virtual disks per I/O group Virtual disks per managed disk group Fullyallocated virtual disk capacity

2048 MB to be used. This limit represents the per-cluster maximum of 2^22 extents. Virtual Disk Properties 8192 2048 No limit is imposed beyond the percluster VDisk limit Requires maximum extent size of 2048 MB to be used. This limit represents the per VDisk maximum of 2^17 extents. Note: Do Not Use VDisks Larger than 2TB in FlashCopy Mappings Requires maximum extent size of 2048 MB to be used. This limit is less than the fullyallocated virtual disk capacity due to 260,000 GB the additional capacity required for the space-efficient metadata. Note: Do Not Use VDisks Larger than 2TB in FlashCopy Mappings Maximum requires an 8-node cluster; refer to the virtual disks per I/O group limit below

256 TB

Spaceefficient virtual disk capacity

Virtual disk mappings per host object Virtual disk to host mappings per cluster Copies per VDisk VDisk copies per cluster Total

512

20,000 Mirrored Virtual Disk Properties 2 8192 1024 TB The maximum number of VDisks cannot all have the maximum number of copies This maximum configuration will

Mirrored VDisk capacity per I/O group Host objects (IDs) per cluster Host objects (IDs) per I/O group Total Fibre Channel ports and iSCSI names per cluster Total Fibre Channel ports and iSCSI names per I/O group Total Fibre Channel ports and iSCSI names per host object

consume all 512 MB of bitmap space for the I/O group and allow no Metro or Global Mirror or FlashCopy bitmap space. Generic Host Properties 1024 A host object may contain both Fibre Channel ports and iSCSI names Refer to the additional Fibre Channel and iSCSI host limits below

256

2048

512

512

Fibre Channel Host Properties 1024 - Cisco, Brocade and See also - Fibre Channel hosts per McDATA Fibre Channel I/O group below. fabrics hosts per cluster For Brocade support, please see Note 155 - CNT 2below this table. 256 - QLogic 2048 - Cisco, McDATA and Brocade Fibre Channel fabrics host ports per cluster 310 - CNT 512 - QLogic

256 - Cisco, McDATA and Brocade Fibre Channel fabrics hosts per I/O group N/A - CNT 64 - QLogic 512 - Cisco, McDATA and Brocade Fibre Channel fabrics host ports per I/O group N/A - CNT 128 - QLogic Fibre Channel hosts ports per host object (ID) iSCSI hosts per cluster iSCSI hosts per I/O group iSCSI names per host object iSCSI names per I/O group Remote Copy (Metro Mirror and Global Mirror) relationships per cluster Remote Copy relationships per consistency group 512 iSCSI Host Properties 256 64 256 256 Copy Services This can be any mix of Metro Mirror and Global Mirror relationships. Maximum requires an 8-node cluster (Virtual disk per I/O group limit applies) See also - iSCSI hosts per I/O group below

8192

No limit is imposed beyond the Remote Copy relationships per cluster limit

Remote Copy consistency groups per cluster Total Metro Mirror and Global Mirror VDisk capacity per I/O group FlashCopy mappings per cluster FlashCopy targets per source Cascaded Incremental FlashCopy maps FlashCopy mappings per consistency group FlashCopy consistency groups per cluster

256 This limit is the total capacity for all master and auxiliary VDisks in the I/O group. 1024 TB This maximum configuration will consume all 512 MB of bitmap space for the I/O group and allow no FlashCopy or VDisk mirroring bitmap space.

4096

256 A virtual disk can be the source of up to 4 incremental FlashCopy maps. If this number of maps is exceeded then the FlashCopy behaviour becomes non-incremental.

512

127 This is a per I/O group limit on the total capacity for all FlashCopy mappings using bitmap space from a given I/O Group. 1024 TB This maximum configuration will consume all 512 MB of bitmap space for the I/O Group and allow no Metro or Global Mirror or VDisk mirroring bitmap space.

Total FlashCopy VDisk capacity per I/O group

Note: Do Not Use VDisks Larger than 2TB in FlashCopy Mappings Copy services bitmap memory per I/O group 512 MB Storage System Properties Note: One storage controller WWNN is assigned per 2145-CF8 node containing Solid-State Drives (SSDs). Some storage controllers have a separate WWNN per port e.g. Hitachi Thunder 256

Storage controller WWNNs per cluster

64

Storage controller WWPNs per cluster WWNNs per storage system WWPNs per WWNN LUNs (managed disks) per cluster LUNs (managed disks) per storage controller Internal Solid-State Drives per node

16 16

4096

No limit is imposed beyond the LUNs (managed disks) per cluster limit

Applicable only to 2145-CF8 nodes

Note 1: Fabric and device support A statement of support for a particular fabric configuration here is reflects the fact that SVC has been tested and is supported for attachment to that fabric configuration. Similarly a statement that SVC supports attachment to a particular backend device or host type

reflects the fact that SVC has been tested and is supported for that attachment. SVC is only supported however for attachment to particular devices in a given fabric if IBM and that fabric vendor both support that attachment. It is the users responsibility to verify that this is true for the particular configuration of interest as it is impossible to list individual support or no support statements for every possible intermix of front end and backend devices and fabric types. Note 2: Support for large fabrics (>64 hosts) The following restrictions apply to support for fabrics with up to 1024 fibre channel hosts with SVC 5.1.x: 1. All switches with more than 64 ports are supported as core switches with the exception of the Brocade M12. Any supported switch may be used as edge switch in this configuration. The SVC ports and backend storage must all be connected to the core switches. 2. The minimum supported firmware level for Brocade core switches is 5.1.0c. 3. Each SVC port must not see more than 512 N port logins. Error code 1800 is logged if this limit is exceeded. 4. Each I/O group may not be associated with more than 256 host objects. 5. A host object may be associated with one or more I/O groups - if it is associated with more than one I/O group it counts towards the maximum 256 total in all of the I/O groups it is associated with.