ICP ICPCON, User Manual

Page 1: ...le and ICP RAID Navigator 1st Edition Copyright 1998 2000 ICP vortex Computersysteme GmbH Konrad Zuse Str 9 74172 Neckarsulm Germany ICP vortex Corporation 4001 E Broadway B 20 Phoenix AZ 85040 USA All Rights and Changes Reserved 01 ...

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Page 3: ...mber by calling ICP vortex Corporation at 602 414 0414 This RMA number must be dis played on the outside of your package Products must be properly packaged to prevent damage in transit ICP vortex accepts no responsibility for products which are damaged on arrival due to poor freight service Disclaimers Disclaimers Disclaimers Disclaimers The foregoing is the complete warranty for ICP vortex produc...

Page 4: ...numbers For Europe 49 0 7132 9620 900 For the USA 602 414 0414 or send us a FAX For Europe 49 0 7132 9620 400 For the USA 602 414 0444 or send us an E Mail For Europe support vortex de For the USA support icp vortex com or check our Website http www icp vortex com ...

Page 5: ...hanks to all my Friends Monika Wolfgang the grandmasters AnnDee Lois Jeniffer Valerie Carl Frank Ken the right one and William the Phoenix Crew Achim Dieter Günter Hooshiar Johannes Jörg Norbert Otto Ralph Sam Steffen Winfried Brigitte Alfred AB We need clustering I say we have it and Ruediger Andreas AK or Kopf nur mit ö Michael Mipf where is my CPU Jürgen Jogo Hi is Jurgen there Jürgen JB diesbe...

Page 6: ...erence will not occur in a particular installa tion If this equipment does cause harmful interference to radio or television reception which can be determined by turning the equipment off and on the user is encouraged to try to correct the interference by one or more of the following measures Reorientate or relocate the receiving antenna Increase the separation between the equipment and the receiv...

Page 7: ...e Controller 26 I 4 3 1 Menu Advanced Setup Configure Controller Controller Settings 26 I 4 3 2 Menu Advanced Setup Configure Controller Firmware Update 27 I 4 3 3 Menu Advanced Setup Configure Controller Intelligent Fault Bus 27 I 4 3 4 Menu Advanced Setup Conf Controller Non Intelligent Enclosures 27 I 4 3 5 Menu Advanced Setup Configure Controller Advanced Settings 29 I 4 3 6 Menu Advanced Setu...

Page 8: ...ld Progress 39 I 4 6 13 Menu Advanced Setup Configure Array Drives Create new Array Drive 40 I 4 7 Menu Advanced Setup Configure Host Drives 41 I 4 7 1 Menu Advanced Setup Configure Host Drives Change Drive Name 42 I 4 7 2 Menu Advanced Setup Configure Host Drives Swap Host Drives 42 I 4 7 3 Menu Advanced Setup Configure Host Drives Remove Host Drives 42 I 4 7 4 Menu Advanced Setup Configure Host ...

Page 9: ... Parity Verify 64 II 5 8 Parity Recalculate 64 II 5 9 Progress Information 65 II 5 10 Expansion of an Array 65 II 5 11 Add a Hot Fix Drive 66 II 5 12 Remove a Hot Fix Drive 67 II 5 13 Hot Fix Pool Access 67 II 5 14 Add a RAID 1 Component Mirror a Drive 67 II 5 15 Remove a RAID 1 Component Remove a Mirror Drive 68 II 5 16 Replace a Logical Drive 68 II 5 17 The Different States of an Array Drive 68 ...

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Page 11: ...11 Chapter I ICP RAID Console ICP RAID Console ICP RAID Console ICP RAID Console ICPCON ICPCON ICPCON ICPCON ...

Page 12: ...ation Online Capacity Expansion of existing Disk Arrays Enhanced repair functions for Disk Arrays with failed drives Monitoring functions indicate the performance of the various components Cache statistics Available for MSDOS NetWare 3 x 4 x 5 x Windows 9x Windows NT Windows 2000 Linux SCO Unix Loadable locally on the server or remotely from an authorized workstation support of various protocols N...

Page 13: ...program for Windows NT 2000 is part of the ICP System CDROM To load the program under Windows NT 2000 enter ICPCON ENTER For using ICPCON to monitor the server s remote the MON4SOCK DLL has to be loaded in addition must be located in the same directory as ICPCON It supports SPX IPX and TCP IP network protocols for NetBIOS you can load instead MON4NETB DLL I 1 4 Loading the ICPCON Program Under Win...

Page 14: ... mentioned before the ICPCON program appears identical for all operating systems Thus we can demonstrate the use and functioning of this program regardless of the oper ating system used In previous chapters we have already described the hierarchical struc ture of the ICP firmware We have defined 4 different levels of hierarchy Level 1 where the physical devices named Physical Devices are found lev...

Page 15: ...Interface represents the method of how ICPCON connects with the ICP Controller In this example Win 9x NT 2k means that this ICPCON is the Windows version and is loaded on a Windows system If you press ENTER ICPCON scans this local system for ICP Controllers Instead of Win 9x NT 2k you could also find here Linux NetWare etc Selecting Sockets allows for the remote connection of this workstation with...

Page 16: ...d Setup ICPCON offers two fundamentally different operating modes Express Setup Advanced Setup with configuration functions Monitor with monitoring functions The various menu options can be selected either with the cursor up down keys or by pressing the high lighted character F4 allows the switching between the Advanced Setup and Express Setup modes Monitor Express Setup Advanced Setup With View S...

Page 17: ...es I 3 The Menu Monitor I 3 1 Menu Monitor View Statistics In each of these menus ICPCON displays the performance of the drives of the correspond ing level of hierarchy The throughput of the drives is displayed in KB s KiloBytes per second and IO s I Os per second number of IO s on the controller The performance figures reflect the load being on the controller and not necessarily the maximum perfo...

Page 18: ...ed out of the cache i e without triggering an immediate Disk IO By setting the Sample Rate you can choose the interval at which the ICP Controller deliv ers new measurements According to the operating system used the sampling rate can be set to a maximum of 60 seconds The default setting is 1 second With Logging On Off you may create a log file which records all the statistic values over a longer ...

Page 19: ...nment tables Note If a hard disk works with alternate tracks it is generally no longer suitable for applications with high performance expectations When ever a defective block is being accessed the read write actuator has to move to an alternate position and this requires extra time If you observe that the number of reassigns is constantly increasing you may suspect that something is wrong with th...

Page 20: ... logging list is a good source to analyze complex events and problems I 4 The Menu Express Advanced Setup I 4 1 Menu Express Setup Configure Host Drives This function allows a very easy installation of new Host Drives and does not require any special knowledge Apart from minor differences this menu option is identical with the menu option Configure Host Drives in the Advanced Setup in Express Setu...

Page 21: ...the build state as soon as you quit ICPCON While the array is in the build state redundancy information is calcu lated and stored to the hard disks of the array Ready State The disk array is fully operational when in the ready state All redundant information is pre sent that is a hard disk can fail without impairing the functionality of the disk array This is the normal state of a disk array The s...

Page 22: ... but only one of the two Logical Drives is really defective and the other was blocked out since it was connected with the same SCSI channel as the defective one The Array Drive s state is error and normally all data would be lost The ICP Controllers include some functions which allow the patch of this Array Drive from the error state into the fail sate Before the actual patch the defective drive h...

Page 23: ...mum values After leaving ICPCON or after pressing F10 for refresh the ICP Controller starts the build process on this Host Drive In our example it calculates the parity information and writes it to the hard disks The status during this process is build When the build is successfully finished the status changes into ready If you press ENTER on a Host Drive the following options become available Cha...

Page 24: ...N from the Flash RAM of the ICP Controller Before you can partition a new Host Drive it may become neces sary to reboot the system first The partitioning menu has similar functions as the MS DOS program FDISK You can create and delete a partition and also change the active partition MS DOS can only be booted from an active partition Just like FDISK ICPCON can handle primary partitions extended par...

Page 25: ...rity can longer be maintained You may call our technical support center for further assistance After selecting the Array Drive ICPCON display the actual drive which has failed In this example it is the hard disk which forms Logical Drive 5 After confirmation the failed drive has to be taken out and the new one has to be config ured on the same ID an plugged in again ICPCON detects the new drive an...

Page 26: ...red twice primary and secondary configuration data on each hard disk I e the ICP Controller itself carries no configuration data of a specific disk array Out of this reason the migration of Host Drives between ICP Controllers is very easy and secure even if the SCSI IDs and channels are changed Simply connect the hard disks to the new ICP Controller and the Host Drives will automatically available...

Page 27: ...or backplanes ICP s Ultra Wide Disk Array Controllers were the last ICP Con trollers supporting this sometimes also called DEC Fault Bus Today s modern subsystems are either using SAF TE SCSI Accessed Fault Tolerant Enclo sures or SES SCSI Enclosure Services as communication links to the controller These intelligent subsystems are normally build on so called backplanes which host hard disks which ...

Page 28: ...on set which includes all hard disks which should be auto hot pluggable The following example shows the slots of the enclosure which have been assigned with hard disks To fill an empty slot press ENTER and select the desired hard disk It should be outlined again that SAF TE and SES are definitely the better choices for auto hot pluggable subsystems Only with these systems a secure Auto Hot Plug is...

Page 29: ...nnels of the ICP Controller for clustering Special care must be taken that the IO Processors of a shared channel SCSI or Fibre Channel have different IDs otherwise there will be conflicts I 4 3 7 Menu Advanced Setup Configure Controller Clear Log Buffer The ICP Controller records certain events in a logging buffer which is part of the Flash RAM If it is planned to use the ICP Controller in a compl...

Page 30: ...in an array of many drives If you press F8 you can repair the configuration data of a physical drive If your ICP Con troller should ever display during his boot sequence a message like Detected Primary Con figuration Data error using Secondary or similar you can try to repair the data with F8 If you press ENTER on a specific drive ICPCON opens the Configure Disk menu Here all relevant adjustments ...

Page 31: ...e no influence on the transfer rate anymore Two SCSI bus participants which want to exchange data between each other have to check if and how i e with which parameters a synchronous data transfer between them is possible Therefore the mere setting does not automatically en able synchronous data transfer this mode is only effective if both devices support it and after they have checked their capabi...

Page 32: ...with a very high probability to a non functioning hard disk Before the actual formatting ICPCON asks you whether the Grown Defect table of the hard disk should be deleted Some users believe that this makes a hard disk with a lot of grown defects like new This is wrong As soon as the bad sectors are accessed again a re assign will happen generating a new grown defect I 4 4 3 Menu Advanced Setup Con...

Page 33: ...igure Phys Devs Enclosure Status After selecting this option you can either view the Enclosure Status or view configure the enclosure slots Before you can use the Auto Hot Plug with a SAF TE subsystem you first have to configure the subsystem more precisely it s intelligence the so called SEP SAF TE Enclosure Processor To assign a specific hard disk to a SAF TE enclosure slot press ENTER on the em...

Page 34: ...34 SEP FAN FAN Power Supply Status LEDs Hot Plug Control Hard Disk SCSI Channel ICP Disk Array Controller Power Supply Door Lock Temperature ...

Page 35: ...f one single hard disk If a Logical Drive consists of more hard disks it is of the type Chain concatenation of several hard disks F3 loads the media of removable hard disks and F5 turns for some seconds periodically the hard disks LED on and off To configure and setup an new Logical Drive select Create new Logical Drive ICPCON dis plays a list of free Physical Drives which are not already part of ...

Page 36: ... 2000MB each the Logical Drive will have a capacity of 8000MB When data is written to this Logical Drive the first hard disk is filled first then the second and so on Although it is not advisable Logical Drives of the type Chain can also be components of Array Drives I 4 6 Menu Advanced Setup Configure Array Drives This main menu option allows you to configure Array Drives level of hierarchy 3 Arr...

Page 37: ...ogical Drives One Logical Drive has failed and the Array Drive went into the fail state Another failure would cause data loss Unfortunately you find another Logical Drive which is shortly before failing e g you hear a strange noise from it or it s grown defect counter explodes If you now initiate a hot plug it is very likely that this critical Logical Drive will also fail This would result in a di...

Page 38: ...o become a Hot Fix drive must not be an active component of another Array Drive 2 The Logical Drive that is to become a Hot Fix drive must have a storage capacity greater than or equal to the storage capacity of the smallest Logical Drive of the Array Drive Example A type RAID 5 Array Drive consists of the following components Logical Drive 0 2000MB Logical Drive 1 1500MB Logical Drive 2 1100MB Lo...

Page 39: ...ch is calculated during an array build or rebuild is stored on a dedicated Logical Drive RAID 4 or is distributed over all Logical Drives of the Array Drive RAID 5 This information is often called parity data The calculation is made with an exclu sive OR function XOR If a Logical Drive of an Array Drive fails its data can be re calculated by means of the data present on the other Logical Drives of...

Page 40: ... which the data is divided Valid values are 16KB 32KB 64KB or 128KB The default is 128KB The Build Type decides how the redundancy information is created The Destructive Build which is only available if ICPCON was loaded with CTRL G fills all hard disks with 0 and no further parity calculation is necessary This build method is pretty fast but the build must be successfully finished before you can ...

Page 41: ...ave to get a replacement hard disk or because you did not realize the failure immediately since you didn t hear the ICP Controller s alarm signal or because nobody checked the file server increases the risk of data loss which will occur if a second hard disk should fail Therefore new redundancy should be created as soon as possible and in an entirely automated manner Integrating a Hot Fix drive as...

Page 42: ...etup Configure Host Drives Split Host Drive For some purposes it might be of interest to split an existing Host Drive into two or several Host Drives Each Host Drives looks to the operating system just like a single hard disk Since the new Host Drives have smaller capacities ICPCON has to write new header infor mation on the two Host Drives All data will be lost I 4 7 5 Menu Advanced Setup Configu...

Page 43: ...43 Chapter II ICP RAID Navigator ICP RAID Navigator ICP RAID Navigator ICP RAID Navigator ...

Page 44: ...recalculate the parity data of RAID 4 and RAID 5 Array Drives Online capacity expansion of Array Drives Split and merge Host Drives Hot Plug Replace a failed member of an Array Drive Hot Fix Configure a spare disk for an Array Drive Configure SAF TE compliant enclosures Monitoring of the whole subsystem Watch the performance and throughput of virtually every part of the subsystem Simply drag and d...

Page 45: ...oses Description Select Controller Select a local or remote ICP Controller for further ac tions Physical Configuration Show and or modify the ICP Controller and device set tings Logical Configuration Show and or modify the Logical Drive configuration Statistics Show statistics Events Show the ICP Controller events Show information on the ICP RAID Navigator Click on this icon and then on the icon y...

Page 46: ...lp II 2 5 File Menu Commands Here you can end your ICP RAID Navigator session Shortcuts Press Alt F4 or click to close the window II 2 6 View Menu Commands Use the items in this menu to open or close the windows of the main components of the ICP RAID Navigator or change the appearance of the main window ...

Page 47: ...or the Logical Configuration windows This is the rate which is used by the ICP RAID Navigator to update the contents of the physical and logical configura tion windows The options are Refresh on Activates and deactivates the window update Refresh if window becomes active Update the window if it becomes active Refresh information every seconds Sets the frequency for automatic window re freshes The ...

Page 48: ...troller and afterwards the ICP Control ler itself The selection and de selection is done by double clicking on the ICP Controller The selected protocol system and ICP Controller are shown in a dashed yellow frame No more action can be done in this menu II 4 Physical Configuration Window This window shows the physical configuration of the SCSI or Fibre Channel busses of the selected ICP Controller ...

Page 49: ...ld be always On BIOS The BIOS of the ICP Controller is needed to boot the computer and the operating system from a Host Drive BIOS Warn ing Level Enables or disables the display of non critical boot messages of the ICP Controller during the system boot phase Supported BIOS Drives Adjust the number of Host Drives which are supported by the ICP Controller s BIOS This is the number 2 or 7 of Host Dri...

Page 50: ...dware In contrast to EPROMs Flash RAMs can be re programmed many times and without the complicated UV light erasing procedure Thus both software modules can be easily updated without having to remove the controller from its PCI slot Firmware and BIOS are part of the GDT_RPFW file To get the latest firmware for your ICP Controller you can visit our website at http www icp vortex com or our ftp serv...

Page 51: ...e drive has failed please con tact our hotline for further assistance If no drive failed you may also check the Controller Events to find out if the CPU of the ICP Controller is overheated If you hear an audible alarm but the silence function is not offered and there are no critical controller events check if the alarm is coming from a different source like the CPU cooler or the mainboard II 4 2 I...

Page 52: ...on Thus pay attention to the correct termination of the SCSI bus and set the ID of the hard disk to a free address if that is not done automatically by your storage subsystem If you do not know which IDs are in use on the selected SCSI channel you can find this out in the physical configuration win dow Wrong SCSI bus termination and or SCSI ID conflicts will cause a failure of the com plete SCSI c...

Page 53: ...ens Physical Disk Physical Drive Information Removable Disk The SCSI Parameters The SCSI parameters configure a Physical Drive especially its performance By changing the SCSI parameters you can set the synchronous transfer rate change the settings of the hard disk cache enable or disable the disconnect feature enable or disable the tagged queues Warning By changing these parameters on a new hard d...

Page 54: ...es In order to select a transfer rate above 10 MB s the protocol has to be set to SCSI III Higher frequencies single ended SCSI require better cabling shorter cables and a profes sional termination of the SCSI bus Disconnect This SCSI feature enables a SCSI device to disconnect from the SCSI bus By releasing the SCSI bus while the device doesn t need it the bus becomes free for other devices to tr...

Page 55: ...you confirm to start the low level format you are asked if you want to delete the grown defect list of the drive Deleting this list does not mean that the grown defects media de fects vanish It is very likely that the low level format will trace them again and map them out Usually there is no need to low level format a drive This should be only done with a defective drive If you want to check the ...

Page 56: ...trolled by a software driver e g an ASPI module the operating system or an application Non direct access devices cannot be initialized or changed in their SCSI parameters with this program Icon Description double click opens CDROM CDR Physical Drive Information Tape drive SAF TE Processor Scanner SCSI Printer Example for a Physical Configuration and the Controller Settings ...

Page 57: ...pens right click opens Host Drives Host Drive Information Create a new Host Drive Create a new Host Drive Normal Host Drive This Host Drive belongs to the selected ICP Controller on a non clustering I O channel Local mounted Cluster Drive A Cluster Drive is a Host Drive on a clustering I O channel This Host Drive is mounted on the selected ICP Controller Clustering means that two or more servers s...

Page 58: ...In case of one server failing these resources move over to another valid server The hard disks used for clustering are physically not connected with just one ICP Controller but with several ICP Controllers in different servers shared I O channels Usually when booting a cluster the ICP Controller starting up first will gain control over all Host Drives on the clustering I O channels If you want to ...

Page 59: ...Disk Hot Fix Drive Failed missing Hot Fix or Single Disk Chaining Drive Logical Drive Information Physical Drives These are the hard disks You cannot change any settings here If you want to change the settings you have to do this in the physical configuration window Physical Disk You can t change the disk settings here Use the Physical Configuration window instead ...

Page 60: ...t can be renamed by selecting the menu Drive Name of the menu list you get after clicking with the right mouse button on the Host Drive icon Capacity The capacity reported to the operating system The size of a Host Drive can be smaller than the size of the Logical Drive or the Array Drive the Host Drive is a part of Partition Table The partition table of a Host Drive can contain up to four partiti...

Page 61: ...in the ready status i e attribute RW Striping Size RAID 0 5 10 Data written on RAID 0 4 5 or RAID 10 drives is distributed over all drives striping This is the size of the blocks The striping size can only be changed when the drive is created standard setting is 32KB Invalid Missing RAID 1 These two values show the number of invalid missing drives While the build is in progress initial copy of dat...

Page 62: ...ributes The attribute of a Logical Drive is usually read write RW If a component of a disk array is missing while startup and the op erator decides not to activate fail mode the array is set to the read only attribute RO When the missing drive is available again the Array Drive shows again the ready status i e attribute RW Last Status The last status information of a Logical Drive This is differen...

Page 63: ...he operating system The structure of the Host Drives is not known to the operating system i e the operating system does not recognize that a given Host Drive consists of a number of hard disks forming a disk array To the operating system this Host Drive simply appears as one single hard disk with the capacity of the disk array This complete transparency represents the easiest way to operate disk a...

Page 64: ... contain parity information which is used in case of a drive failure The parity information is calculated from the user data on the disk array On RAID 4 disk arrays the parity data is stored on a single disk parity disk on RAID 5 disk arrays the parity data is being distributed over all drives parity striping This option verifies online the par ity information of the selected RAID 4 or RAID 5 Arra...

Page 65: ...r the Array Drive RAID 5 The estimated time indicates the time needed by the controller to finish this process if the user load on the controller does not change The elapsed time is reset when opening the window II 5 10 Expansion of an Array Click the right mouse button on the Array Drive icon There are two fundamental functions which are available within this option Migrate the RAID level of the ...

Page 66: ...ere are problems with this disk or with the cabling of this disk there is always the risk of data loss Some expansions will take quite a long time so it is advis able that there is not too much traffic i e user load on the system otherwise an expan sion of a large Array Drive can easily take days II 5 11 Add a Hot Fix Drive Click the right mouse button on the Array Drive icon Use this option to ad...

Page 67: ...se a Hot Fix Drive is not compul sory If you control the disk array at regular intervals and immediately replace a defective drive by shutting down the system or hot plugging you can do without a Hot Fix Drive II 5 12 Remove a Hot Fix Drive Click the right mouse button on the Array Drive icon This option opens a box showing available Hot Fix Drives Here you can select the Hot Fix Drive you want to...

Page 68: ...cal Drive from a box where you see all members of the RAID 1 Array Drive After confirmation the Logical Drive is removed If the RAID 1 Array Drive consists of two drives like usual the RAID 1 Array Drive disappears and only one Logical Drive will be left You can create a new RAID 1 Array Drive by selecting add RAID 1 II 5 16 Replace a Logical Drive Click the right mouse button on the Logical Drive...

Page 69: ...nt You can monitor the progress of the array build rebuild by clicking the right mouse button on the Host Drive and then selecting progress information Note User traffic on an Array Drive which is in the build rebuild state slows down the build rebuild process The fail state RAID 1 RAID 4 5 The Array Drive changes to the fail state whenever a Logical Drive fails Redundancy infor mation is still pr...

Page 70: ...ild patch ready patch This word indicates that the original Array Drive went through a significant procedure I e the parity information was recalculated anew Or the Array Drive has been patched from the error state into the fail state This may become extremely helpful in a situation where two Logical Drives of an Array Drive fail at the same time but only one of the two Logical Drives is really de...

Page 71: ... time You can add drives by drag and drop them from the physical and logical configuration windows into the statistics win dow If you want to change the layout of the lines adjust the scales of the axis or remove drives from the statistics windows you can do this using the chart menu You can scale the statistics window using the cursor keys scale time down up scale throughput ...

Page 72: ... often this event occurred Some events may occur quite often so this counter helps to keep an overview The next column lists the date and the time when the event occurred The last column describes the event At the bottom of the window there is the Settings button Here you can change the polling interval and enable the auto save function Logs that are not saved on the hard disk are lost when the sy...

Page 73: ...gator includes an online help function You can either choose the Help menu or the pointer with the question mark to obtain online help on a specific icon or func tion There is also an index which allows you to search for certain keywords and or topics ...

Page 74: ...sers To install the ICP Service under Windows NT copy ICPSRV EXE and ICPSRV CPL into the winnt system32 directory and load ICPSRV i from the command line This installs the service In a next step load in the control panel the services program and activate the ICP Service with the Start button If you want to start the ICP Service during every new boot of the system automatically click on the Startup...

Page 75: ...75 In the IOCTLSrv property sheet you can add remove users which have remote access to the ICP Controller with the ICP RAID Navigator Passwords are encrypted ...

Page 76: ...s After loading ICPMAIL EXE and selecting Settings you can configure the mailing tool If you select Local System all messages are displayed on the server itself If you select Log file you are asked for a log file path name All messages are recorded into this file Remote System allows you to add workstations to which messages are send ...

Page 77: ...77 Following is a typical message generated by ICP Mail The Mail option allows the interfacing to a standard mailing system like Microsoft Out look or Exchange ...