HP StoreVirtual Centralized Management Console

[eddyc]

Hi all,

 

We run a virtual environment at the school where I work at which was installed 3 years ago by a Managed Service Provider. I have always applied the VMware ESXi upgrades, etc myself with no issues however I'm a bit stumped by something relating to the SANs that I want to do...

 

We have three hosts in a Cluster - fine. We also have three HP P4500 SAN's in a Cluster, which are managed via the vCentre server - which is virtual and lives on the SAN Cluster.

 

Whenever we log into the HP StoreVirtual Centralized Management Console and it says that the console itself needs to be updated, then that is fine - we can apply these updates. However, the issue we have is that the SANs are on a very old version of the software (and various versions between the three of them). If we say we wish to do these updates, it says that all of the Volumes & LUNS which host all of our virtual machines will be taken offline. Doing this, will therefore take the vCentre server offline which means that we cannot do them this way.

 

Am I missing something obvious here?

 

Do I need to install the HP StoreVirtual Centralized Management Console on a physical machine and connect it to the iSCSI network to update the SANs or is there a way to do this via the virtual vCentre server?

 

I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to these HP P4500 SANs but would ideally like to get the software updates applied as we have had some incorrect errors\warnings being generated by the SAN monitoring software and HP say that these issues are all resolved in the latest release.

 

Thanks in anticipation! Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction!

 

Ed

[john]

I personally would suggest that you should have a physical vCentre server as by your info you have the 1 SAN and 1 vMware cluster so if the SAN throws a wobbler you cannot get your vMware database with the VM details so your in a bit of a vicious circle that vCentre won't fire due to SAN and you cannot poke vCentre to fix it as the san is not working etc... (see the pattern here).

 

Once you have this physical you can then have the P4500 software on that, thus you can take the storage down and still work on things, I would also say running them in a cluster with differing software isn't that good either so you should look at sorting this out.

 

The software is a free tool you can get by filing in a form, stick it on a PC / Laptop, and stick that on the network so it can access them and away you go to patch them and then look at the future planning.

 

Before people go but vMware say a virtual vCentre appliance is fine and even give you one from the website, @Ric_ can tell you the joys of running a Virtual vCentre on the same storage and systems as the actual main systems, its supported by VMware but its really not a good idea and makes life a lot more messy when things go wrong than you need it to be if its a physical box.

[RobD]

Hi,

 

If your SAN cluster has a few P4300's in it then you should be ok as when you run the upgrade it should just take one down at a time and the other P4300 in the cluster should take over.

 

Rob

[eddyc]

Hi,

 

If your SAN cluster has a few P4300's in it then you should be ok as when you run the upgrade it should just take one down at a time and the other P4300 in the cluster should take over.

 

Rob

 

Hi Rob,

 

Our SANS are P4500's which makes me think a shutdown and running from the laptop is required.

 

Cheers, Ed

[RobD]

Sorry I meant to write P4500s, I still don't think it'll make any difference if they are running as part of a cluster but its probably best to safe rather than sorry.

[Achandler]

I have upgraded our P4500 live (it was the holidays though), the P4500 are usually set up to replicate each other, so one being down is no problem.

[Ric_]

I also upgraded a pair of P4500 live last week... it just works.