HP Brocade 4Gb SAN Switch for HP BladeSystem p-Class User Manual
Page 208
208 Configuring the PID format
1.
Collect device, software, hardware, and configuration data.
The following is a non-comprehensive list of information to collect:
• HBA driver versions
• Fabric OS versions
• RAID array microcode versions
• SCSI bridge code versions
• JBOD drive firmware versions
• Multipathing software versions
• HBA time-out values
• Multipathing software time-out values
• Kernel time-out values
• Configuration of switch
2.
Make a list of manually configurable PID drivers.
Some device drivers do not automatically bind by PID, but allow the operator to manually create a PID
binding. For example, persistent binding of PIDs to logical drives may be done in many HBA drivers.
Make a list of all devices that are configured this way. If manual PID binding is in use, consider
changing to WWN binding.
The following are some of the device types that may be manually configured to bind by PID:
• HBA drivers (persistent binding)
• RAID arrays (LUN access control)
• SCSI bridges (LUN mapping)
3.
Analyze data.
After you have determined the code versions of each device on the fabric, they must be evaluated to
find out if any automatically bind by PID. It may be easiest to work with the support providers of these
devices to get this information. If this is not possible, you may need to perform empirical testing.
Binding by PID can create management difficulties in a number of scenarios. HP recommends that you
not use drivers that bind by PID. If the current drivers do bind by PID, upgrade to WWN-binding
drivers if possible.
The drivers shipping by default with HP/UX and AIX at the time of this writing still bind by PID, and so
detailed procedures are provided for these operating systems in this chapter. Similar procedures can
be developed for other operating systems that run HBA drivers that bind by PID.
There is no inherent PID binding problem with either AIX or HP/UX. It is the HBA drivers shipping with
these operating systems that bind by PID. Both operating systems are expected to release HBA drivers
that bind by WWN, and these drivers may already be available through some support channels.
Work with the appropriate support provider to find out about driver availability.
It is also important to understand how multipathing software reacts when one of the two fabrics is
taken offline. If the time-outs are set correctly, the failover between fabrics should be transparent to the
users.
You should use the multipathing software to manually fail a path before starting maintenance on that
fabric.