How to Install IBM DS4000 (FastT) Storage Manager Client on Windows

The IBM Storage Manager Client allows you to control and manage your DS4800, DS4700, DS4300 disk systems.  This guide describes how to install on a Windows machine.

How to Install or Upgrade Storage Manager Client

1) Download the software.

For Windows XP, 2000, 2003, or 2008, on a 32-bit platform, click here.
For Windows Vista , 2003, 2008, on a 64-bit platform, click here
For Windows Vista 32-bit, click here.

If these links don’t work for you, try navigating IBM’s site:

www.ibm.com > support & downloads > fixes, updates, and drivers
Category > (under SYSTEMS) system storage
Product Family > disk systems, Product > DS4800 or whichever DS4000
Select Operating System and Click GO
Click Downloads on the Support and Downloads box.

2) Unzip your download. Keep a copy of these install files around.  The scripts folder will likely come in handy.

3) Run your installation executable file.  In my case it’s SMIA-WS32-10.10.35.06.exe.

4) Select your language, agree to IBM’s legal stuff.

5) Select your Installation type.  To select the right type, answer this question.  What computer are you installing Storage Manager on?

If it’s the server connecting to your DS4000 disks, select Full Installation.
If it’s just a desktop workstation or a laptop, select Management Station.

6) Select Do not Automatically Start the Monitor

You should designate one machine, preferably a server that’s always running and connected to the disks by fibre channel, to act as the monitor.  For me, that’s our AIX machine.

7) Review the disk space requirements and click Install.

Dell™ PowerEdge™ Expandable RAID Controller 4/Di User’s Guide

source

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Troubleshooting

Dell™ PowerEdge™ Expandable RAID Controller 4/Di User’s Guide

  General Troubleshooting Information

  BIOS Boot Error Messages

  Potential Problems

 

For information about qualified SCSI cables and connectors, visit Dell’s web site at or contact your Dell representative for information.


General Troubleshooting Information

Table 7-1 describes general problems that you might encounter when using the RAID controller, and suggested solutions.

Table 7-1. General Problems 

Problem Suggested Solution(s)
Some operating systems do not load in a computer with PERC 4/Di. Check the system basic input/output system (BIOS) configuration for PCI interrupt assignments. Make sure a unique interrupt is assigned for PERC 4/Di. Initialize the logical drive before installing the operating system.
One of the hard drives in the array fails often. Check the drive error counts.
Format the drive.
Rebuild the drive.
If the drive continues to fail, replace the drive with another drive with the same capacity.
Check the SCSI cables.
Pressed <Ctrl> <M> and tried to make a new configuration. The system hangs when scanning devices. Check the drives IDs on each channel to make sure each device has a different ID.Check the termination. The device at the end of the channel must be terminated.Replace the drive cable.
Multiple drives connected using the same power supply. There is a problem spinning the drives all at once. Set the drives to spin on command. This will allow two devices to spin two devices simultaneously.
Pressing <Ctrl> <M> does not display a menu. These utilities require a color monitor.
At system power-up the PERC 4/Di BIOS banner display is garbled or does not appear at all. The cache memory may be defective or missing. Replace the cache memory.
Cannot flash or update the EEPROM. Contact Dell support.
Firmware Initializing…appears and remains on the screen. Make sure that TERMPWR is being properly provided to each peripheral device populated channel.Make sure that each end of the SCSI channel chain is properly terminated using the recommended terminator type for the peripheral device.
Why does a failed logical array still get a drive assignment? To maintain the DOS Path statement integrity.

BIOS Boot Error Messages

Table 7-2 displays the BIOS boot error messages, and suggested solutions.

Table 7-2. BIOS Boot Error Messages 

Message Problem Suggested Solution
BIOS Disabled. No Logical Drives Handled by BIOS The BIOS is disabled. Sometimes the BIOS is disabled to prevent booting from the BIOS. Enable the BIOS by pressing <Ctrl><M> at the boot prompt to run the RAID BIOS Configuration utility or enter Dell Manager if running Novell® NetWare® or Red Hat Linux.
Configuration of NVRAM and drives mismatch. Run View/Add Configuration option of BIOS Configuration Utility.Press any key to run the Configuration Utility. The configuration stored in PERC 4/Di does not match the configuration stored in the drives. Press <Ctrl><M> to run the RAID BIOS Configuration Utility. Select Configure—> View/Add Configuration to examine both the configuration in non-volatile random access memory (NVRAM), and the configuration stored on the hard drives. Resolve the problem by selecting one of the configurations.
Unresolved configuration mismatch between disks and NVRAM on the adapter after creating a new configuration Some legacy configurations in the drives cannot be cleared. Clear the configuration.Low level format the related drives and re-create the configuration.
1 Logical Drive Failed A logical drive failed to sign on. Make sure all physical drives are properly connected and are powered on. Run the RAID BIOS Configuration Utility or enter Dell Manager if running Novell® NetWare® or Red Hat Linux to find out if any physical drives are not responding. Reconnect, replace, or rebuild any drive that is not responding.
X Logical Drives Degraded x number of logical drives signed on in a degraded state. Make sure all physical drives are properly connected and are powered on. Run the RAID BIOS Configuration Utility to find if any physical drives are not responding. Reconnect, replace, or rebuild a drive that is not responding.
1 Logical Drive Degraded A logical drive signed on in a degraded state. Make sure all physical drives are properly connected and are powered on. Run the RAID BIOS Configuration Utility to find out if any physical drives are not responding. Reconnect, replace, or rebuild any drive that is not responding.
Insufficient memory to run BIOS. Press any key to continue… Not enough memory to run BIOS. Make sure cache memory has been properly installed.
The following SCSI IDs are not responding:Channel x:a.b.c The physical drives with SCSI IDs a, b, and c are not responding on SCSI channel x. Make sure the physical drives are properly connected and are powered on.
Battery life is low There is a high number of battery cycles. Reset the battery counter cycle to zero in the RAID BIOS Configuration Utility.
Following SCSI disk not found and no empty slot available for mapping it The physical disk roaming feature did not find the physical disk with the displayed SCSI ID. No slot is available to map the physical drive. PERC 4/Di cannot resolve the physical drives into the current configuration. Reconfigure the array.
Following SCSI IDs have the same data y, z
Channel x: a, b, c
The physical drive roaming feature found the same data on 2 or more physical drives on channel x with SCSI IDs a, b, and c. PERC 4/Di cannot determine which drive has the duplicate information. Remove the drive or drives that should not be used.
Unresolved configuration mismatch between disks and NVRAM on the adapter The PERC 4/Di is unable to determine the proper configuration after reading both NVRAM and configuration on disk. Press <Ctrl><M> to run the RAID BIOS Configuration Utility, then. select Configure—> New Configuration to create a new configuration. Press <Ctrl><H> to run the WebBIOS Configuration Utility, then use the NVRAM/DISK Configuration screen to resolve the mismatch.Note that this deletes any configuration that existed.

Potential Problems

Table 7-3 contains information about other possible problems.

Table 7-3. Potential Problems 

Topic Information
Physical drive errors You can display the Media Error and Other Error options in the RAID BIOS Configuration Utility. Access the Objects—> Physical Drive menu, select a physical drive, then press <F2> to display the options. A Media Error is an error that occurred while actually transferring data. An Other Error is an error that occurs at the hardware level because of a device failure, poor cabling, bad termination, signal loss, etc.
Online volume extension Online volume extension allows the controller to determine the drive capacity. You can use the drive space of a hard drive that was just added to an existing drive array without rebooting the operating system.This option must be enabled to increase the size of a logical drive or add a physical drive to an existing logical drive. Run the RAID BIOS Configuration Utility to enable online volume extension (which is known as Virtual Sizing in the utility).
PERC 4/Di power requirements The maximum power requirements are 15 watts at 5 V and 3 amps.
Windows NT does not detect the PERC 4/Di. Refer to the Operating System Driver Installation Guide for the chapter about Windows NT driver installation.

Please read all restrictions and disclaimers.


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Configuration of NVRAM and drives mismatch (normal mismatch).

Configuration of NVRAM and drives mismatch (normal mismatch).

After a harddisk crash the NVRAM can be screwed up of a Dell PERC controller. To set the configuration from the disks to the nvram, do the following:

1. Run the BIOS utility (CTRL+M) to see the configuration,
2. Select Configure,
3. View/Add Configuration,
4. Select the desired Configuration,
5. If this is the configuration you want to use, escape and select Save.

After restarting the nvram has the latest config written to it.

ESX3.5i on bootable USB key

  1. Download ESX Server 3.5i Installable ISO
  2. Extract INSTALL.TGZ from the root directory of the ISO image using an IZArc
  3. Extract /usr/lib/vmware/installer/VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-67921.i386.dd.bz2 from INSTALL.TGZ using IZArc
  4. Extract VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-67921.i386.dd from VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-67921.i386.dd.bz2 using IZArc
  5. Attach the USB flash drive and make sure you no longer need the data on it
  6. Use WinImage to transfer VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-67921.i386.dd to the USB flash drive
    1. Disk->Restore Virtual Hard Disk image on physical drive…
    2. Select the USB flash drive (Warning: If you select the wrong disk you will lose data!)
    3. Select the image file VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-67921.i386.dd
    4. Confirm the warning message
    5. Wait for the transfer to complete
  7. Unplug the USB flash drive (Warning: If you forget to unplug the flash drive from the PC you might lose the data on your hard drives the next time you boot!)
  8. Attach the USB flash drive to the machine you want to boot (Warning: If ESX Server 3i recognizes local drives, you might lose the data on it, so make sure you don´t need it anymore or unplug all hard drives!)
  9. Turn the machine on and make sure the USB flash drive is selected as boot device
  10. Watch ESX Server 3i boot
  11. Configure
  12. Enjoy!

Adding a physical disk to LVM in Redhat/CentOS

Source

Problem:

My computer only has 20GB of disk space. I just have 1 partition. I want to add another disk (40GB). I don’t want to add another partition (and I really don’t want to reinstall the whole system), I want to increase the size of the root partition to 60GB. i.e. I want the root partition to span across two physical disks.

Solution:

  1. Add new physical disk. Boot.
  2. # pvscan 

    This will show you the current physical volumes.

  3. # fdisk /dev/sdb 

    Add the disk to your machine as a primary partition. Partition type: “8e (LVM)”. Obviously /dev/sdb may be different on your system.

  4. # pvcreate /dev/sdb1 

    This creates a new physical LVM volume on our new disk.

  5. # vgextend VolGroup00 /dev/sdb1 

    Add our new physical volume to the volume group: VolGroup00. Again, this group name may by different for you, but this is what Redhat & CentOS assigns by default when you install your system.

  6. # pvscan 

    You should see the new physical volume assigned to VolGroup00.

  7. # lvextend -L+40G /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 

    This increases the size of the logical volume our root partition resides in. Change the -L flag as appropriate.

We’ve just added 40GB to the logical volume used by the root partition. Sweet as. Now we need to resize the file system to utilize the additional space.

  1. Reboot into rescue mode using your CentOS CDROM. 

    From memory this involves typing linux rescue as your boot option.

  2. When prompted, skip the mounting of system partitions.
  3. # lvm vgchange -a y 

    This command makes your LVM volumes accessible.

  4. # e2fsck -f /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 

    Run a file system check, the -f flag seems necessary. No idea what we do if the returns an error?

  5. # resize2fs /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 

    Without any parameters resize2fs will just increase the file system to the max space available.

Reboot and your root partition is now 40GB lager, spanning multiple disks.

Viewing Ghost Hardware after P2V

After converting a physical machine to a virtual machine, you need to remove the “old” hardware. Sometimes this hardware is not shown in the device manager. To do this you will need to follow the Microsoft KB article 241257 or 269155.

Abstract:
Device Manager displays only non-Plug and Play devices, drivers, and printers when you click the Show hidden devices command on the View menu to enable it. Devices that are installed but are not currently connected to the computer (such as a Universal Serial Bus (USB) device or “ghosted” devices) are not displayed in Device Manager, even when you use the Show hidden devices command.

To work around this behavior and display phantom devices when you use the Show hidden devices command:

  1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command Prompt.
  2. At the command prompt, type the following lines, pressing ENTER after each line
    set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
    cd\%SystemRoot%\System32
    start devmgmt.msc

    where %SystemRoot% is the folder in which Windows 2000 is installed.

  3. Troubleshoot the devices and drivers in Device Manager, as required.NOTE: You must first select show hidden devices on the Device Manager View menu before you can see devices that are no longer present in the system.
  4. When you are done troubleshooting, quit Device Manager, and then close the Command Prompt window. Closing the window clears the variable you set in step 2 and prevents ghosted devices from being displayed when you use the Show hidden devices command.

NOTE: When you quit Device Manager and close the Command Prompt window, the set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 variable is turned off so you cannot see the phantom devices.

VMware server 2 and Vista problem

When installing VMware server 2 on a vista ultimate 32/64bit machine you get the following error when trying to logon:

The VMware Infrastructure Web Service at “http://localhost:8222/sdk” is not responding (Connection Refused)

Turns out that in my Vista Ultimate 64 installation the host file entry for localhost has been reduced to  the IPV6 lookup only:

::1             localhost

Adding back the usual:

127.0.0.1     localhost

Fixed the problem!

Restoring SQL database into other database with TSM

Problem(Abstract)
SQL database restore back to the same SQL Server without overwriting the original database when using the Data Protection for SQL client  
   
Resolving the problem
The Data Protection for SQL will allow for a restore to an alternate location on the same SQL Server.
When using the Data Protection (DP) for SQL to restore a database to an alternate location (into a new database) on the same machine, both the RELOCATE and the RESTORE INTO parameters must be used.
The RELOCATE is used to determine what file on the hard drive will be used to hold the data. This will need to be changed to have a different name and/or location to be something different (test) than the production database.
The RESTORE INTO is used by the SQL Server to identify the database. This should be a new name so that the SQL Server will be able to differentiate between the production database and this second (test) copy of the database.

To use the Data Protection for SQL GUI client, the following steps can be used for this alternate restore.
1. Launch the DP SQL GUI.
2. Click on the Restore Databases tab.
3. Make sure that both boxes are checked for the Wait for Tape Mounts (for both the Restore and for File Information).
4. Depending on which database backup is being restored, it may be necessary to check the Show Active and Inactive box.
5. On the left-hand side, under SQL Servers, open the list to see the SQL Server and databases.
6. In the main restore window, select the database to be restored ( the box next to the database should be yellow and have a red check mark).
7. Right click on this selected database and 3 options will be displayed: Restore Into, Relocate, Standby Server Undo File.
8. Both the Restore Into and Relocate options will need to be configured.
Select the Restore Into and enter the alternate name for this database on the SQL Server.
Then select the Relocate, wait for the dialog box to appear that contains the information regarding the file location/name for the database backup and update these to be different than the existing database files. If the metadata containing this information must wait for a tape mount on the TSM Server, it may be some amount of time until the dialog box is populated. It is not possible to update the Relocate information until after the box has been filled in with this File Information metadata.
9. Then click the Restore button to complete the restore.