FYI: User Experience - QLA2200

[Michelle_Laveri]

Like me you might have quite old equipment in your garage or basement which you use for your development work. I recently aquired at a very reasonable price a SAN, its a Sun StoreEDGE A5200. The chap I bought if from second-hand filled it with 10 34GB Drives, and gave me 3xQLA2200. He even lobbed in some spare disks he had around for as well. In case you don't know this stuff is 1GB to the SAN.

I would have preferred something I was more familiar with and modern like a MSA1000 with QLA2340's. But beggers can't be choosers, and it was an absolute bargin....

Anyway, I had problems. Both with the ESX 3.x.x installer and once the installer is over. It seems the installer and VMkernel select the wrong driver.

It should be using a qla2200_7xx driver, but instead it selects a qla2200_707 instead (one designed for a 2-4GB pipe)

Symptoms: No access to the SAN or just one disk being displayed out of the 10 that are in the array...

I found the kb article 1560391 told me how to list my drivers, and install the correct driver...

The installer is still a problem - as I see only one LUN and the internal drives. But as I don't ever do boot from SAN's this isn't a problem....

That's it... fun eh?

Regards

Mike

[RobMokkink]

mike,

you don't see more lun's?

Because i also have a sun storedge with 12 * 18gb 15k scsi disk, that i now access with iscsi.

But i am planning to upgrade my storage also to qlogic 2200 hba's en switch over to sanmelody.

So i can do further testing etc.

[Michelle_Laveri]

Yes, I now see all my disks in the array - but not before following the kb article which explains how to get qla2200 working. Basically, you de-install one driver using RPM, and then install the correct driver. THen modify /etc/vmware/esx.conf and recompile with esxcfg-boot -b...

It's a relatively painless process... but a pain in the rear if you rebuild ESX frequently like I do...

Regards

Mike

[Michelle_Laveri]

Oh btw - this kb article that fixed my problem

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&externalId=1560391

Regards

Mike

[RobMokkink]

Mike,

thanks for your reply.

I have seen the kb, but doing that kind of stuff is also fun.

So i think i will buy some qla2200 hba's soon.

[bbatman]

Hello,

i have also the same problem, and i have tried to take a look into this article.

Uninstall any 4Gb drivers using the command rpm -e <4Gb_driver_name>.

Example:

rpm -e VMware-esx-drivers-scsi-qla2200-v7.07-7.7.4.1vmw-29822

The actual driver name varies, depending on the Fibre Channel manufacturer and ESX Server build number.


Install the 2Gb drivers using the command rpm -Uvh <2Gb_driver_name>.

Example:

rpm -Uvh VMware-esx-drivers-scsi-qla2300-v7xx-7.4.0.1vmw-29822.i386.rpm

The actual driver name varies, depending on the Fibre Channel manufacturer and ESX Server build number.

With this article i can uninstall the driver for the qla2200, but where did i get the new driver?

after i have done this i will change this? is this correct?

In the file /etc/vmware/esx.conf, change:

lpfcdd_732 to lpfcdd_7xx

qla2200_707 to qla2200_7xx

qla2300_707 to qla2300_7xx

[Michelle_Laveri]

I found the driver on the ESX CD in the RPMS directory. There appears two be two... It looks like the installer is selecting a 2GB driver for 1GB card. The KB basically discuss how to deinstall the wrong driver, and install the right one...

Regards

Mike

[RobMokkink]

the qla2200F/66 use the correct driver

[fun_E_mahn]

Looks like I had/have the same issue. I followed the KB and installed the qla2200_7xx driver (I extracted it from the same ESX 3.01 CD used to install ESX), however even I after remove the old qla2200_707 driver via rpm -e, when I do a vmkload_mod -l it still shows the qla2200_707 as being loaded.

So, I then rebooted and it hangs during startup when trying to load the new qla2200_7xx..... after about 5mins the console screen turns colour and its looking for a dump file location.

I have verified the integrity of the driver and validated that my card is indeed the 1Gb QLA2200.

Is there something I have to do on the Linux Kernel Module end of things perhaps?

Any ideas would be great!!

Cheers

[Michelle_Laveri]

Sorry, i missed this reply to my post...

All I can think of is that - there was a miss edit in the esx.conf file.... did the esxcfg-boot command flag up any errors when it recompiled initrd or change the grub.conf file...

It might interest to know my QLA2200 don't work at all with ESX 3.5 RC1 or ESX 3i. Of course they are only beta/RC. But I would be surprised if the QLA2200 will work in future releases - as they aren't on the HCL anymore anyway...

I'm going to spend sometime tommorow trying to get the old driver to work with the new code. But as I'm no Linux hotshot - I'm not holding my breathe!

Regards

Mike

[RobMokkink]

the qlogic 2200's aren't working anymore, it just finished reinstalling my testlab.

Tryed to installed the old rpm's from 3.0.2-ur1, but no luck.

[Michelle_Laveri]

Yes, I can confirm QLA2200's are working anymore... it is jurrasic park hardware...

I'm buying some QLA2340's of ebay, and some LC-SC cables so I don't have to replace the gbics on the SAN... and then I will keep my eye in the New Year for a MSA1000. There's one in the UK for £1.5k with disks, 512MB of cache, 15K disks...

As I'm moving house right now - I don't think my girlfriend would approve of me buying another SAN when she wants a new dishwasher.

Ho hum!

Regards

Mike

[RobMokkink]

I am switching back to openfiler use cross cables with intel gigabit nics (i goth a bunch of them laying round)

[Michelle_Laveri]

I'd be careful with OpenFiler. Last thing I heard is their version of IET did not support the SCSI Renew/Release instructions required to use VMFS. Corrupt can follow. Indeed some people have told me its inevitable...

Regards

Mike