QLogic HBA setting for QLA 2342 or 2462

[VBDINO]

I would like to know from those using QLA 2342 or 2642 qlogic hba card and that have researched for recommended setting, what values you are using for those options:

Adapter Setting

Fibre Channel Tape Support : Disabled

Advanced Setting

Execution Throttle : I have the value 16

Login Retry Count : I have the value 8

Port Down Retry Count : I have the value 14

Link Down Timeout : I have the value 30

Operation Mode : I have the value 0

Interrupt Delay Timer : I have the value 0

Enabled Interrupt "2462" : I have the value No

Thanks

Richard

[VBDINO]

Anyone!

[christianZ]

Using these settings on qla2460 and all works fine here. Some people change the Qlength from 32 (standard) to 64, but IMHO this is not needed (under normal circumstances).

Have you any problems there?

[Schorschi · Accepted solution]

We kicked the tires on this basic issue for some time... the short answer, defaults work fine. We had a couple of 'know it alls' demand we test at 64 versus 32, so we did. Never mind VMware and QLogic say, never change this unless there is a specific reason. For example, in a typical virtualization environment, read/writes are completely random in reference to total IO and total time for IO transport. However, if the majority of your VMs are doing something odd, like many many writes, taking longer or many many reads that are fast and you guess OSes are very sensitive to timing, there might, just might me a reason for messing around with the HBA queue length in one direction or the other. We found that increasing the timeout value in the VMs themselves was a better solution over all, then tweaking ESX its-self. When an ESX host is hurting, do you really want that much stuff queued up for commit to disk? No. so increasing the length to 64, and depending on the type of storage solution you have, it could get real ugly.

[whynotq]

the only time i've ever had cause to change them is when using LSI/StoreAge via Qlogic "intelligent" switches. Qlogic publish a best practices guide which includes settings for the Queue depth. it may shed som elight on options so I've attached it.

[VBDINO]

The reason that I am asking it is that for a over a year, we have been using the values I mentionned. But two weeks ago, when I updated the firmware on my QLA2462, the execution throttle that was at value 16, changed to 255. It sounds like the default value is now 255.

Richard

[pironet]

Here are my settings. All other settings set to default.

Hardware is HP BL460c, attached to an EMC Symmetrix.

Hard Loop ID: 125

Fibre Channel Tape Support Disabled

Data Rate 3

Execution Throttle 256

LUNs per Target 256

Port Down Retry Count 30

Link Down Timeout 30

The following settings are required for ESX Server operations on the Symmetrix networked storage system:

Common serial number (C)

Auto negotiation (EAN) enabled

Fibrepath enabled on this port (VCM)

SCSI 3 (SC3)

Unique world wide name (UWN)

SPC 2 (Decal) (SPC2) SPC 2 flag set

Hope that helps...

Rgds,

Didier

[bolsen]

HBA settings should be configured for what your storage vendor specifies. Many times the vendors release "bios versions" specific (tuned) for their storage.

On the other hand, most of the time the defaults will be fine. The fine tuning will help with things like fail over and resets.

[VBDINO]

I haven't found yet a configuration that solve the reset issue. IBM says that to follow vmware recommendation for the DS4000. So we did that but still not failling over when reseting a controler. Now I am trying to get IBM in a conference call with a VMWare engineer.

[ssatish]

Have you got into a call and got the issue solved?

My HBA settings for port down retry count is 15 and i am too facing the not failing over issue as you.

Can you please let me know how you solved this issue?

[boamek]

VBDINO/SSATISH,

Have either of you been able to get a consensis from IBM/VMware on the DS4000 issue? I've run into the exact same situation!

Thanks