Giving up: Cannot see anything in Disk Management

[cdevidal]

Summary: Even though two AoE vblade targets show up in StarPort, nothing is seen in Disk Management. I even created a RAM drive and it doesn't show up.


I have a serious problem for which I need a SAN. It's 6:40p on a Sunday afternoon and I really need to get this thing working, so I'm giving up on StarPort and downloading the Openfiler 2.3 ISO, with its built-in iSCSI target. I will use the Microsoft iSCSI initiator.

I'm only giving you this information so you can troubleshoot and prevent frustrated customers.


Details:
StarPort: Professional 3.6 Build 0x20080410
Initiator 1 with the problem: Windows 2003 Enterprise with latest patches, updates, drivers and firmware (fresh install)
Initiator 2 working fine: Windows 2003 Standard
Target: vblade-18 on CentOS 5.2

I ran three vblades going to three different partitions, none of which is larger than 2TB. At first I could only mount one vblade at a time on the first initiator server; after I rebooted it I could no longer see any vblades in Disk Management.

I rebooted, uninstalled/reinstalled StarPort, same problem. I actually had this problem yesterday, and when I reformatted and reinstalled Windows last night the problem went away for a while, until I tried to mount the second vblade and the problems began.

Even if I install a RAM drive, nothing shows up.

I see nothing unusual in the Event Viewer.

And again, the second server attached to the same SAN works fine.

In case it matters, the broken server is multipath-aware; that is, it has 2 SCSI cards connected to an external array and if one of the two cards or ports on the array fails it will switch over automatically. Don't know if that affects StarPort. That's about the only unusual thing about this server; otherwise it is normal. I'm not going to go through the trouble of uninstalling Multipath and trying it again, would take a while and I'm very tired. Must move on.

Here is the log file (click here).

[aaron (staff)]

Well... If you want "victim" or "fallen hero" treatment - that's your personal choice. Just don't make us look stupid here, OK? It's 3:20 A.M. Monday and support is here. Up and running. Sir, YES, SIR! The problem is - IF YOU DON'T SHARE YOUR PROBLEMS WITH US - WE CANNOT HELP.

According to the StarPort log there're no issues with it. So we'd LOVE to see what vblade sends to syslog facility. What you have is a quite complicated combination of the software & hadware and with all my respect I would not point to StarPort as to weakest point initially... Just my $0.02

[cdevidal]

Well... If you want "victim" or "fallen hero" treatment - that's your personal choice. Just don't make us look stupid here, OK? It's 3:20 A.M. Monday and support is here. Up and running. Sir, YES, SIR! The problem is - IF YOU DON'T SHARE YOUR PROBLEMS WITH US - WE CANNOT HELP.

According to the StarPort log there're no issues with it. So we'd LOVE to see what vblade sends to syslog facility. What you have is a quite complicated combination of the software & hadware and with all my respect I would not point to StarPort as to weakest point initially... Just my $0.02

Aaron, don't take offense, please. I wouldn't have even imagined that support was open on the weekend, I wasn't necessarily pointing to StarPort (which is why I mentioned my Multipath software) and I wasn't trying to make you look stupid. Just trying to be helpful for the next user. Please understand.


Turns out I had exactly the same problem with iSCSI; it was the HP Multipath software. Uninstalled that, iSCSI works now. I don't have time to test StarPort or I would. Going to proceed with Openfiler.


Aaron, again, not trying to make you look stupid, just pursuing truth; I worked 3 years in tech support -- I know it's not right to point fingers.

[cdevidal]

Update: iSCSI was way too CPU-intensive for the target, so I'm back to StarPort. Working like a dream now.

That HP Multipath software must be buggy, but there isn't a newer version so I'll just have to pass on it and hope we don't lose a SCSI card. Bummer that we paid extra for the functionality...

[aaron (staff)]

So, just as I've told - StarPort was not the one to blame... OK, nice to know this

Well... On your place I'd go for iSCSI but commercial target. Modern NICs do offload TCP in such a perfect way you should not see any slowdown b/c of the extra TCP and IP stacks processing. So using CoRAID shelves + StarPort makes sense (b/c of CoRAID & RDS support). Using freeware and unsupported vblade + StarPort... Probably not