[Info-vax] 'Partitioning' raid controller for VMS on Integrity

[Rich Jordan]

On Thursday, September 9, 2021 at 2:51:39 PM UTC-5, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2021-09-09 00:06:10 +0000, Rich Jordan said: 
> 
> > VMS doesn't do partitions. Are there any SAS type RAID controllers for 
> > RX servers that can present 'partitioned' logical drives to VMS so it 
> > sees separate spindles? 
> > 
> > Wondering if it is possible at all to f/ex build a 4 disk ADG array and 
> > present more than one spindle to VMS from it.
> Recent array controllers can do this (logical drives distributed across 
> one or more arrays of physical devices), though the HP/HPE 
> documentation here seemed lacking. 
> 
> Among these, P410 and P812, and others. 
> 
> You'll probably be using MSA$UTIL to establish this, and/or one of the 
> HP/HPE tools. 
> 
> Getting disks in and out of the RAIDset can sometimes be a little 
> tricky to manage when a failure arises. Best to get extra HDDs or SSDs, 
> and pre- provision some into the arrays as spares. 
> 
> http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c02289065.pdf 
> 
> etc. 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

Thanks to all who responded.  The older system has 18 drives providing nine mirrored volumes, plus another 6 mirrored 'universal' drives proving backup staging space.  They are hoping that we can put in an RX-2800 with eight larger SAS drives (which even RAID'ed will add up to much more space) but due to the age and complexity of the software involved we really want to keep the same number of spindles/volumes visible to VMS.   If possible without a second controller and more drives in a shelf.  If we have to merge more than one or two disks together it will seriously increase the complexity of acceptance testing; everything should be clearly controlled via logicals but a lot of hands wrote a lot of software over 30+ years, so dropping to four large mirrorsets is not going to happen.  I know we can do the work, but the time and cost...

We have an RX2660 we use for testing here; it has a P410i with the advanced license and some 1.2TB SAS drives (and four smaller ones).  I can make an ADG array with the four large drives in ORCA, but it does not provide any means of 'breaking that down' into smaller volumes to pass to VMS.  I tried (once, so maybe missed something) to use MSA$UTIL from the DVD boot of HP VMS V8.4, and it also doesn't seem to have options to break down that large disk (which is already visible to VMS).  So if a P410 can do this (is a P410i different in that regard?) I should be able to test on the 2660 and confirm that it can be done on the potential RX-2800.

I'm installing VMS kit on a local disk temporarily so I can see if the MSA$UTIL options are different when booting from a live disk. I've got the appropriate update kits available to install

If SAUPDATE from the UEFI console is also capable of doing the volume setups then I'm going to try to find that kit/download somewhere; HPe moved it all behind paywalls.  I should have RX2620 firmware kits from when ours was under support but I doubt I have that for the 2660 (which was a customer letting us have it back when they retired); no idea if we could use one kit for just that one utility on a different box.

Thanks again