Re: VMS SAN Primer

On Jul 4, 2:08 am, "Paul Lentz" <Someth...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm looking at trying to get a System Admin Job. I've worked with VAXen for about 13 years with some of that as a Admin in a static
but scaling-down shop. I also worked with Alphas.

I keep having to hem and hah when it comes to questions about SAN, and I guess it's config :-). I had to do (re)configuration on
Storage Works boxes and HS series controllers. But never got to touch anything officially labeled SAN.  I've done a few quick
searches to try and find a primer on what is usally excellent VMS documentation available on the web, but haven't really found
anything definitative.

Can anybody point me in the direction to get started to become a VMS Alpha SAN know-it-all???

If you've every done any work with a CI-based cluster, you have SAN
experience. An HSJ-based storage system just shows you again that
Digital was ahead of the other players. Your "HBA" is the CIPCA.
Your SAN controller is the HSJ. You boot from SAN (HSJ) and each host
shares the same volumes just like they do in today's SANs. The only
major difference between a CI-based SAN and today's SANs is that all
nodes on your CI must be part of the same cluster - there isn't really
a "zoning" concept.

I managed a CI-based cluster for a bunch of years and the migration to
a modern SAN was painless. If you have the concepts down, the rest is
just syntax and experience. My VMS hosts still lead the pack with
boot-from-SAN. Other than our VMware blades, the other platform
admins have not yet switched to a boot-from-SAN approach.

For VMS systems booting from the SAN, wwidmgr is the tool you have to
know - there's a dedicated manual for it.

There is a lot of good introductory vendor-neutral SAN training on
http://www.snia.org - the Storage Networking Industry Assocation's web
site. SNIA also offers certifications and if you do some job posting
searches on places like LinkedIn, you'll see that those certifications
are recognized and are sometimes a requirement for landing a SAN admin
job. Some vendors (e.g. Hitachi) are starting to defer their
introductory training to SNIA - you take the SNIA training first and
then you take the Hitachi-specific training.

For VMS systems participating in a SAN, you'll typically find HP EVA
or MSA storage so if you're looking to focus on a single storage
system, EVA would be a good place to start. They're really easy to
configure. There's a bunch of EVA material on HP's web site.

Today, VMS systems connecting to SANs will use fibre channel. I
believe that in 8.3, iSCSI is now an option.

Good luck,
.../Ed
--
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
RHCE, BCFP, BCSD, SCSP, SCSE
mailto:ewilts@xxxxxxxxxx
.

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