Maybe not a disclosure but request for information.

[Leif Ericksen]

I work with a bunch of HS20 Blades in a 8677 Chassis and we are using
the Qlogics cards (that was a mistake) connected to an IBM FAStT-900.

Talking to IBM with regards to my problems (blade and san related versus
personal!) I have found that there are known issues with the Qlogics
cards. I do not know if this is a Qlogics, fAStT or combo issue, BUT one
day you might be able to see your SAN the next day you reboot and you
loose the SAN! Even without making any changes to the servers! I was
told that this is a fairly common but non-repeatable as such Qlogcis and
IBM have given up on finding a solution.

Full disclosure elements working with QLogics and an IBM FAStT is a real
pain in the rear!
IBM wants tools on the servers to better build the qla2300.conf file,
but those tools require that you have no firewall installed and port
mapper has to be running so I do not do that.

If I were to start this project over and if my voice carried any weight
in the final choice I would say we are NOT going to use Qlogics because
they are way to unreliable.

QUESTION:
I am trying to find list servers that might be able to answer my
questions and since I am feeling lazy (after being unsuccessful with
google thus far) I am asking here does anybody know of (a) list server
(s) that fit the needs of managing a FASTtT in a Linux environment.

IBM was fairly useless here as well.

[V***@vt.edu]

Post by Leif Ericksen
cards. I do not know if this is a Qlogics, fAStT or combo issue, BUT one
day you might be able to see your SAN the next day you reboot and you
loose the SAN!

OK. Now rephrase it as a computer security issue, so it's on-topic. We may
drift off-topic on occasion, but what *vulnerability* is involved here,
other than the fact that QLogics gear does a better job of fellating donkeys
than actually doing what they were designed to do?

[Michael Holstein]

Full Disclosure : My SAN's broken .. lol .. if only every company in the
world were so honest about their downtime.

It sounds like you're having a problem with redundant FC paths (when you
setup a SAN with 2 cards per host, 2 switches, 2 controllers in the disk
array, etc).

When I worked with IBM's SAN gear at a former employer (we also used
Qlogic cards) there was a "ESS path manager" software (exact name
escapes me) that we had to download off IBM's website. It was a device
driver that handled masking of the inactive path (to avoid seeing twice
the drives due to diverse paths).

We got it working on Windows and Solais but never on Linux.

I should point out though that the qla[22|23|63]xx linux driver supports
path diversity natively via the config file. However if you're booting
off the FC drives (which, btw, isn't reccomended by IBM) the BIOS on the
Qlogic card takes impossibly long (5-10min) while it tries to talk to
the inactive path LUNs.

This might help you to make a working qla2300.conf in linux for IBM's
FASsT :

http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/qla-autoconf/

Cheers,

Michael Holstein CISSP GCIA
Cleveland State University.

Post by Leif Ericksen
I work with a bunch of HS20 Blades in a 8677 Chassis and we are using
the Qlogics cards (that was a mistake) connected to an IBM FAStT-900.
Talking to IBM with regards to my problems (blade and san related versus
personal!) I have found that there are known issues with the Qlogics
cards. I do not know if this is a Qlogics, fAStT or combo issue, BUT one
day you might be able to see your SAN the next day you reboot and you
loose the SAN! Even without making any changes to the servers! I was
told that this is a fairly common but non-repeatable as such Qlogcis and
IBM have given up on finding a solution.
Full disclosure elements working with QLogics and an IBM FAStT is a real
pain in the rear!
IBM wants tools on the servers to better build the qla2300.conf file,
but those tools require that you have no firewall installed and port
mapper has to be running so I do not do that.
If I were to start this project over and if my voice carried any weight
in the final choice I would say we are NOT going to use Qlogics because
they are way to unreliable.
I am trying to find list servers that might be able to answer my
questions and since I am feeling lazy (after being unsuccessful with
google thus far) I am asking here does anybody know of (a) list server
(s) that fit the needs of managing a FASTtT in a Linux environment.
IBM was fairly useless here as well.

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