Re: Attaching Redhat to SAN

From: Chris Cox (ccox_nopenotthis_at_airmail.net)
Date: 02/11/05 

Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 23:48:34 -0600

rickw wrote:
> well, thanks to all. turned out that the BIOS for the HBA needs to be
> installed per hba port on at boot time. (Didn't see THAT anywhere in
> the docs...) The "Processor" entries have dwindled to 3... BUT I
> actually have been able to access, mkfs and mount the LUN on this thing
> now, I'll work on the tape library connectivity now <SIGH> THEN worry
> about not having the Processor lines in /proc/scsi/scsi. I've done
> HP-UX, AIX, Solaris (1.x/2.x) and IRIX... I thought IRIX was bad, it's

You most certainly did not do SAN on Solaris 1.x and likely nothing
prior to Sol7 if I had to guess.. though it is possible with 2.6.
A lot of what you dealt with on Linux is VERY similar to the pains
of dealing with HBAs on Sol 2.6. I think you assessment is
unjustified. Could it be better? Perhaps... but so far, I really
haven't seen anything that isn't a problem on Solaris. There too
you'd have to limit visibility in the case of multipathed devices
(of course you can get some pretty dumbed down multipath stuff
between your local HBAs if you have more than one). Under 2.6
there were several cases where reboots had to be done... at least
with most HBAs.

Shoot you'd think that some things on Sun would work without
a reboot... they still have a lot of work to do in that area.

> not that I am bashing the Linux OS, but being written for the masses on
> the masses varying hardware platforms comes with a good deal of
> generalizations from manufacturers. Not always a bad thing, but I
> really wish a good OBP was available for commodity hardware. Having to

As you said... Linux works everywhere.. you've answered your own
question about OBP really. Much easier to make things interoperate
when everything has the word Sun printed on it (with that said, there
are some things that don't fit together even though they DO say
Sun on them.. Sun is no Apple).

> attach kbd and monitors is a fiasco waiting to happen, especially (as
> in my case) the box is at a different facility and hands off management
> is a thing of the past when you start working in the PC world. I'm

Most Sun framebuffers are EXTREMELY limited in capability. And frankly
the framebuffer stuff is still pretty cryptic... I disagree here.
All Linux boxes can support a serial console (well pretty much all.. need
a serial port!). What kind of LOM support do you get outside of
Sun? Many just route out serial... which is acceptable (see below).

> sure that some company will get OBP and LOM for PC hardware and I for
> one can't wait for that day to come. Untill then though, I'll have to
> burn gas when a box doesn't respond to pings and drive over, hook up
> kdb and monitor, etc...

LOM support is there on pretty much all "high end" (and I use the term
lightly) x86 server platforms (e.g. HP and Dell).

Ever heard of Cyclades? Get yourself a TS2000 to manage all of
your devices (routers, switches and Linux/*ix boxes.. .even the ones
without LOMs.. which are MANY.. including small players like HP, IBM,
DEC, etc.). That'll give you SSH to the ports (serial ports) of
the consoles or LOMs or whatever. Can even hook up a modem for true
out of band mgmt (so you can reconfigure the whole network remotely).
The Cyclades runs that primitive Linux OS... show me a Solaris
based product that does this... buzrpt.. none.

I can get to the BIOS/Prom screens of pretty much all of my servers,
routers, switches.. even telco.. including the Linux boxes. More work
still needs to be done, certainly, but for every frustration I have
working with Linux on x86, I can pretty much find a counter issue with
Sun/HP/IBM/etc.

>
> Thanks to all with the assistance!

You made some good points.. but there's a whole world you haven't
explored yet that will impress even you IMHO. I'd really look
at the Cyclades stuff.

>
> Cheers,
>
> Rick
>

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