Error about “Bus 0 Enclosure 0” when creating LUN on EMC Clariion array, but your not creating a LUN on “Bus 0 Enclosure 0”

The Exact error is “The RAID group being selected (RAID 1/0, RAID 1) includes disks that are located both in Bus 0 Enclosure 0 as well as some other enclosure(s). This configuration could experience Rebuilds of some disk drives following a power failure event, because Bus 0 Enclosure 0 runs longer than other enclosures during a power failure event.  An alternate configuration where the disks in the RAID group are not split between enclosures in this manner, is recommended.”

The fix was to update my Flare version and everything now works normally.

Just in case you lose your password, or the Fiber Channel Cisco MDS 9124e for your c7000 blade enclosure ships with a password you don’t know like mine was

1) Plug into the HP OBA Serial port, 9600 8/N/1.

2) connect interconnect <bay number>

2b) reset switch, during boot press "CTRL+c"

3) dir bootflash:

4) boot “kickstart_image” i.e. m9100-s2ek9-kickstart-mz.3.1.2a.bin

5) config t

6) (in config) admin-password <new complex password>

7) exit

8) dir bootflash:

9) load bootflash:”system image" i.e. m9100-s2ek9-mz….(not kickstart again like the broken HP instructions tell you)#note they have fixed this document in the last week.

10) login (fyi, the default username is “admin” not “admin123” like cisco.com states)

11) config t

12) (in config) snmp user admin auth md5 <new complex password>

(you need step 12 to use Cisco Device Manager to complete setup)

13) int mgmt 0

14) ip address <ip><mask>

15) exit

16) ip default-gateway <dg-ip>

17) exit

18) copy run start

19) (bonus info) if you want to leave the current bay to setup the redundant switch, hit CTRL+SHIFT+_ to exit back to the OBA so you can start over by connecting to the redundant bay.

Helped HP trace down a firmware issue today

My BL490c G6 blades were unable to get network connectivity to our chassis.  I had setup all the networking in HP Virtual Connect, but 6 blades worked, and 9 did not (we only purchased 15, not 16, don’t ask)

The error I received was different depending on the OS I was loading.

ESX 4.0 Update 1 gave this error: “The script 32.networking-drivers failed to execute and the installation can not continue.”

ESX 4.0 (no update 1) gave this error: Network ports Disconnected.

I was able to isolate this to a blade specific issue by swapping blades 4 and 6 and the issue followed the blades, not the bay.  There are 4 types of firmware on these HP blades that I can see.  BIOS, iLo, Qlogic(HBA), BC (nic).  The UI shows everything but the NIC firmware version.  All other blades with the latest Nic BIOS do not have any active network ports.  If I downgrade them from 2.2.4 to 2.2.2(more specifically the Bootcode from 5.0.11 to 4.8.0), then they work(problem solved).  It’s a real pain to see the HP Nic Bios since it only shows up when booting from the HP firmware CD.  I do have the latest firmware on my c7000 chassis and flex10 switches.  Just to verify this was a blade specific issue, I also swapped hard drives from a non working blade to a working blade, the issue followed the blade again.

I think I have this solved, I’ve “fixed” 5 blades so far by downgrading them, the only way I can find to downgrade the NIC bios is from the HP firmware boot CD, 8.7 has 2.2.4 and 8.6 has 2.2.2.  There is a version 2.2.3, but best I can tell it’s not easy to install it, it must be done from inside a guest OS(no bootable CD) and ESX 4 Update1 does not install because of this error, I’d have to install another OS, then change FW version, then reload the blade.

I have an open HP case to get this resolved, hopefully we can get an updated firmware soon.

HP Virtual Connect Manager

I was unable to definate a network set, or more accurately unable to define uplinks, the option simply wasn’t there.  Turns out when they say IE8 isn’t supported, they aren’t kidding.  I jumped on my ancient XP box running IE6 and suddently it works.

Ready to build a new VMWare Lab Manager 4.0 instance

After months of waiting to get all the parts and pieces together, I believe I finally have them all after getting my HP GBIC’s.

Here is the basic Setup

HP c7000 with 16 BL490c Blades, Dual Quads with 72GB Ram each

Dual Flex-10 and Dual Cisco MDS 9124 blades

EMC CLARiiON CX4-960 with 15k 450GB drives

And here is the part i’ve been waiting so long for…