Hi All,
        Thanks for all the information and suggestions it's given me a lot to
look at. Hopefully I've covered all your questions below...

> I've checked and there's no evidence I can find that anyone has made any
changes against the arrays, either via the command line or vea - the latter
which we don't use. However, looking at the tuneable values and what
they're set to and what the defaults are there are two that are different
to the defaults...

      fuj411:/root# vxdmpadm gettune all
                  Tunable               Current Value  Default Value
      -------------------------------    -------------  -------------
      dmp_failed_io_threshold               57600            57600
      dmp_retry_count                           5                5
      dmp_pathswitch_blks_shift                11               11
      dmp_queue_depth                          32               32
      dmp_cache_open                          off              off
      dmp_daemon_count                         10               10
      dmp_scsi_timeout                         30               30
      dmp_delayq_interval                      15               15
      dmp_path_age                              0              300
      dmp_stat_interval                         1                1
      dmp_health_time                           0               60
      dmp_probe_idle_lun                       on               on
      dmp_log_level                             1                1
      dmp_retry_timeout                         0                0
      fuj411:/root#

I don't know who would've changed these or when, or at all. There's a lot
of disk seen down each path - physical HBA. We have an A and a B side to
the SAN with the disk being presented down both sides to separate HBA's on
the server. The errors and other messages are always to the same array
(IBM_SHARK1) which is the one that has the different value set, and is the
one that see's the throttling against it.

> The version of VxVM is 4.1 MP2 so I know we are downlevel and doesn't
have the new default value of 512 that's come in with 5.1 MP3.

> All paths are active and i/o is seen going down both paths to all disks.
I can see this at the server and the SAN port level. The storage team have
checked and the cannot find anything untoward. I've also had a look at the
HBA's as well (fcinfo hba-port -l <HBA_WWN>)

> The recovery option on both arrays is the same and set to the
following...

      fuj411:/root# vxdmpadm getattr enclosure IBM_SHARK0 recoveryoption
      ENCLR-NAME      RECOVERY-OPTION      DEFAULT[VAL]        CURRENT[VAL]
      
==============================================================================
      IBM_SHARK0      Throttle             Timebound[10]       Timebound
      [10]
      IBM_SHARK0      Error-Retry          Fixed-Retry[5]      Fixed-Retry
      [5]
      fuj411:/root#
      fuj411:/root# vxdmpadm getattr enclosure IBM_SHARK1 recoveryoption
      ENCLR-NAME      RECOVERY-OPTION      DEFAULT[VAL]        CURRENT[VAL]
      
==============================================================================
      IBM_SHARK1      Throttle             Timebound[10]       Timebound
      [10]
      IBM_SHARK1      Error-Retry          Fixed-Retry[5]      Fixed-Retry
      [5]
      fuj411:/root#

My suspicion is that we have some kind of fault it's just identifying
where. I suspect this will involve getting the server up to the latest
patch levels in the o/s and within the version installed for starters and
getting the storage team to carry out a full end to end test of the
hardware. In the meantime thanks again for all your help with this, very
much appreciated. I think I will take Dmitry's advice and log a call with
Symantec and see if they can explain the difference and whether it's just
the way this array type operates.

Thanks again.

Cheers
Phil.



                                                                           
             Dmitry Glushenok                                              
             <gl...@jet.msk.su                                             
             >                                                          To 
                                       William Havey <bbha...@gmail.com>   
             26/07/2012 21:09          phil.cole...@ba.com                 
                                                                        cc 
                                       veritas-vx@mailman.eng.auburn.edu   
                                                                   Subject 
                                       Re: [Veritas-vx] Question over DMP  
                                       partitionsize                       
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           




Hello William, Phil,

26.07.2012, в 21:25, William Havey написал(а):

      Phil,

      I don't believe any DMP values are changed by vxconfigd
      automatically.

      To be certain the partitionsize has not been manually changed,
      Is VxVM command line logging enabled? run vxcmdlog -l to find out
      If yes, look in /var/adm/vx/cmdlog for any vxdmpadm setattr commands.

Phil using VCS, so cmdlog gets rewritten very fast.
If /etc/vx/dmppolicy.info contains nothing about partition size and other
VCS nodes have same partition size differences - it looks like ASL for
SHARK (or vxdmp itself) is making the changes. And only way to verify this
is contact symantec :)

      Do you use vea? If so, its commands are logged in
      /var/adm/vx/veacmdlog. But, I don't believe these values can beset in
      vea.

      I believe the "throttle" and "unthrottle" in the dmpevents log file
      means holding back I/O from being addressed and sent out to storage
      but I certainly can't say the two (partitionsize of 512 and log
      entries for the SHARK1 with that size) are related or not.

Path can be throttled if it holds SCSI command for more than specified
amount of time or if queue depth for the path reaches specified limit. It
can be checked with "vxdmpadm getattr enclosure <enc_name> recoveryoption"
and verified with iostat: asvc_t and actv/wait columns (not sure which
queue vxdmp counts, active or wait).


      Are all paths being used for I/O just about the same?
      vxdmpadm iostat start
      vxdmpadm iostat reset
      vxdmpadm iostat show enclosure=IBM_SHARK0 enclosure=IBM_SHARK1
      interval=5
      The first iteration of the utility shows cumulative statistics from
      the time of mounting the file systems. So, ignore the first output.
      If totals are about equal, then the value the partitionsize value may
      be irrelevant. Perhaps I/O is truly random so that no I/O address is
      within 512 sectors of the previous I/O. Even in a random environment
      sometimes numerous successive I/O's can be within 512 sectors of each
      other so that throttling those I/Os kicks-in.

      IHTH,

      Bill


      On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 11:56 AM, <phil.cole...@ba.com> wrote:
        Hi William,
                Thanks for the reply. Not sure how to get this track cach
        size?
        What's confusing me most here is that the values are so different
        between
        the two arrays. They're identical models set-up up the same and
        with the
        same number of disks allocated to the servers - sorry, forgot to
        mention
        they're in an HA pair using VCS. The only difference is that
        IBM_SHARK0 is
        local to the server where the workload is currently running, and
        IBM_SHARK1
        is in another building about 1.5KM's away. It's this disparity that
        is
        confusing me and making me wonder whether an issue we are seeing is
        being
        caused by this, or if it's an indication of an issue, though I've
        been
        informed by our storage people that there's nothing wrong with
        either
        array.
                This is certainly not something we've changed so I don't
        know if
        VxVM/DMP is throttling things back because it's seeing an issue. I
        have
        seen messages in the /etc/vx/dmpevents.log file for disks in the
        IBM_SHARK1
        array reporting 'Throttled Path' and then 'Un-throttled Path' and
        I'm
        trying to work out if the two are linked.

        Cheers
        Phil.




                     William Havey
                     <bbha...@gmail.co
                     m>
        To
                                               phil.cole...@ba.com
                     26/07/2012 15:48
        cc


        Subject
                                               Re: [Veritas-vx] Question
        over DMP
                                               partitionsize










        Partitionsize is in play when the iopolicy is Balanced, which is
        the
        default policy. You have Balanced.

        It is defined as "The partitionsize attribute: Each successive I/O
        starting
        within in this range (default is 2048 sectors) goes through the
        same path
        as the previous I/O"

        The man page has "Takes the track cache into consideration when
        balancing
        I/O across paths"

        What is the track cache size on each array? Seems that the
        partitionsize
        should be the same value as the track cache size.



        On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 7:09 AM, <phil.cole...@ba.com> wrote:

          Hi,
                  I'm trying to understand why one array has a wildly
        different
          partitionsize value to the other...

          fuj411:/root# vxdmpadm getattr arrayname IBM_SHARK partitionsize
          ENCLR_NAME     DEFAULT        CURRENT
          ============================================
          IBM_SHARK0     2048           2048
          IBM_SHARK1     256            512
          fuj411:/root#

          Both arrays are IBM ESS SHARK 2105's which are active/active and
          operating
          in a Balanced i/o policy...

          fuj411:/root# vxdmpadm getattr arrayname IBM_SHARK iopolicy
          ENCLR_NAME     DEFAULT        CURRENT
          ============================================
          IBM_SHARK0     Balanced       Balanced
          IBM_SHARK1     Balanced       Balanced
          fuj411:/root#

          The server is a Fujitsu PW850 running Solaris 10 with VxVM v4.1
        MP2. The
          volume are mirrored between the two arrays.

          I'm trying to get a better understanding of what this means and
        why it
          would be so different between the two arrays. Any help greatly
          appreciated.

          Cheers
          Phil.

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