Installation Considerations for a System with SAN Drives

Implementation Guide › Installing CA User Activity Reporting Module › Installation Considerations for a System with SAN Drives

Installation Considerations for a System with SAN Drives

When you install the operating system for the CA User Activity Reporting Module appliance on a system with SAN drives, take precautions to prevent CA User Activity Reporting Module from being installed on a SAN drive. Such an installation fails.

Take one of the following approaches to help ensure a successful installation:

Disable the SAN drives. Install the operating system and the CA User Activity Reporting Module application as usual. Then, configure the SAN drives for CA User Activity Reporting Module and recycle CA User Activity Reporting Module to activate the SAN configuration.
Leave the SAN drives enabled. Begin the operating system installation. Exit this procedure as described to change the sequence of operations defined in the kickstart file. Resume the installation process and finish it as documented.

More information:

Install with Disabled SAN Drives

Install with Enabled SAN Drives

Install with Disabled SAN Drives

CA User Activity Reporting Module is currently supported using fixed hardware configurations provided by Dell, IBM, and HP. The following example assumes that the hardware consists of HP Blade Servers using a QLogic Fiber Channel card to connect to a storage area network (SAN) for data storage. The HP Blade Servers come with SATA hard drives configured in RAID-1 (mirrored) configuration.

If you use the kickstart boot file as is, be sure to disable the SAN drives before beginning the installation. Start the installation process with the OS5 DVD and complete the installation as documented.

Note: If you do not start the installation with the SAN drives disabled, CA User Activity Reporting Module is installed on the SAN. In this case, a red screen appears with the message, Illegal Opcode, after CA User Activity Reporting Module reboots.

Use the following sequence of procedures to install a CA User Activity Reporting Module appliance on a system with SAN drives, where you disable the SAN drives before installing the operating system.

Disable the SAN drives.
Install the operating system on the appliance.
Install the CA User Activity Reporting Module server.
Set up a multipath configuration for SAN storage.
Create a logical volume.
Prepare the logical volume for CA User Activity Reporting Module.
Recycle the CA User Activity Reporting Module.
Verify installation success.

When installing the operating system with disabled SAN drives, you work with the following files:

lvm.conf: The configuration file for the Linux Logical Volume Manager (LVM2).
multipath.conf (/etc/multipath.conf): The configuration file for Linux multipathing.
fstab (/etc/fstab): The file systems table file that maps devices to directories in a Linux system.

More Information:

Install CA User Activity Reporting Module

Verify the CA User Activity Reporting Module Server Installation

Set Up a Multipath Configuration for SAN Storage

Create a Logical Volume

Prepare the Logical Volume for CA User Activity Reporting Module

Recycle the CA User Activity Reporting Module Server

Disable the SAN Drives

Use the procedures recommended by your SAN drive vendor to disable the SAN drives on the hardware on which you plan to install the soft appliance.

Disable the SAN drives before installing the soft appliance operating system or the CA User Activity Reporting Module application.

Set Up a Multipath Configuration for SAN Storage

Setting up a multipath configuration is required for a CA User Activity Reporting Module system installed on a RAID system that is to use SAN storage. Physical disks on the SAN are partitioned into logical storage spaces named logical unit numbers (LUNs).

Set up a multipath configuration for SAN storage

Log on to the CA User Activity Reporting Module appliance and su to root.

(Optional) Do a directory listing of /dev/mapper to view the state of the configuration before setting up multipathing and logical volumes. Results resemble the following:

drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     120 Jun 18 12:09 .
drwxr-xr-x 11 root root    3540 Jun 18 16:09 ..
crw-------  1 root root  10, 63 Jun 18 12:09 control
brw-rw----  1 root disk 253,  0 Jun 18 16:09 VolGroup00-LogVol00
brw-rw----  1 root disk 253,  2 Jun 18 12:09 VolGroup00-LogVol01
brw-rw----  1 root disk 253,  1 Jun 18 16:09 VolGroup00-LogVol02

Open the .../etc/multipath.conf file for edit and proceed as follows:

Add the following section under "device {" for each LUN provided by the SAN administrator:

device {

vendor                 "NETAPP"  
product                "LUN"
path_grouping_policy   multibus
features               "1 queue_if_no_path"
path_checker           readsector0 
path_selector          "round-robin 0"
failback               immediate
no_path_retry          queue
     }

Uncomment the 'blacklist' section for all devices. The blacklist section enables multipathing on default devices.

blacklist {

devnode "^(ram|raw|loop|fd|md|dm-|sr|scd|st)[0-9]*"
devnode "^hd[a-z]"
devnode "^cciss!c[0-9]d[0-9]*"

Save and close the multipath.conf file.

Verify that Multipath is turned on and that the LUNs are listed by running the following:
```
multipath -l
```
Note: Paths display as ‘mpath0’ and ‘mpath1’. If the LUNs are not shown, reboot and run multipath again.
View the available drives.
```
fdisk -l
```
List the available partitions and verify that 'mpath0' and 'mpath1' are listed.
```
ls -la /dev/mapper
```
Map the first partition as follows:
```
kpartx -a /dev/mapper/mpath0
```
Map the second partition as follows:
```
kpartx -a /dev/mapper/mpath1
```

Create a Logical Volume

You can use volume manager software to combine multiple LUNs into a logical volume for CA User Activity Reporting Module to access. Logical Volume Manager (LVM) manages disk drives and similar mass-storage devices on the Linux operating system. Storage columns created under the LVM can be resized or moved on to backend devices like SAN storage.

To create a logical volume

Create the first physical volume:
```
pvcreate /dev/mapper/mpath0
```
Create the second physical volume:
```
pvcreate /dev/mapper/mpath1
```
Show all the physical volumes on the system:
```
pvdisplay
```
Create the VolGroup01 volume group. (The VolGroup00 volume group exists.)
```
vgcreate VolGroup01 /dev/mapper/mpath0 /dev/mapper/mpath1 
```
Note: This command creates a volume and makes the two physical volumes part of the group.
Create a logical volume within the volume group:
```
lvcreate -n LogVol00 -l 384030 VolGroup01
```
Create a file system:
```
mkfs -t ext3 /dev/VolGroup01/LogVol00
```

Prepare the Logical Volume for CA User Activity Reporting Module

After you create a logical volume, you populate it with the expected directory structure and assign the ownership and group associations required by CA User Activity Reporting Module. You use vi to modify the fstab file to point to the logical volume you created and then you mount the new data directory.

To prepare the logical volume for CA User Activity Reporting Module

Create a temporary directory, /data1, change the ownership of the /data1 directory to caelmservice, and change the group associated with this directory to caelmservice:
```
mkdir /data1 
chown caelmservice /data1
chgrp caelmservice /data1
```
Stop the CA User Activity Reporting Module server iGateway processes:
```
/opt/CA/SharedComponents/iTechnology/S99igateway stop
```
Change directories to the directory where the CA User Activity Reporting Module agent is running, stop the agent, and verify that the services are stopped:
```
cd /opt/CA/ELMAgent/bin/
./caelmagent -s
ps -ef | grep /opt/CA
```
Change directory to /directory.
Mount the new file system on /data1, copy the contents of the /data directory into the /data1 directory, and verify that the two directories are the same:
```
mount -t ext3 /dev/VolGroup01/LogVol00 /data1
cp -pR /data/* /data1
diff -qr /data /data1
```
Unmount the existing data mount point and then unmount the data1 mount point:
```
umount /data
umount /data1
```
Delete the /data directory and rename the /data1 directory to /data.
```
rm -rf /data
mv /data1 data
```
Modify the line in /etc/fstab that references the /data directory and point it to the new Logical Volume. That is, change /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol02 to /dev/VolGroup01/LogVol00. The changed data is shown in boldface type in the following rendering of a sample fstab file.

device name	mount point	fs-type	options	dump-freq pass-num
none	/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00/	ext3	defaults	1 1
none	/dev/VolGroup01/LogVol00/data	ext3	defaults	1 2
LABEL=/boot	/boot	ext3	defaults	1 2
tmpfs	/dev/shm	tmpfs	defaults	0 0
devpts	/dev/pts	devpts	gid=5,mode=620	0 0
sysfs	/sys	sysfs	defaults	0 0
proc	/proc	proc	defaults	0 0
none	/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01	swap	defaults	0 0

Mount the new data directory and verify all the partitions in /etc/fstab are mounted:
```
mount -a
```
```
mount
```

Recycle the CA User Activity Reporting Module Server

After you create a logical volume, recycle CA User Activity Reporting Module so that you can use the logical volume. To verify success, browse to CA User Activity Reporting Module and view events returned by the System All Events Details query.

To recycle the CA User Activity Reporting Module server

Start the CA User Activity Reporting Module server iGateway processes:
```
/opt/CA/SharedComponents/iTechnology/S99igateway start
```
Start the ELMAgent service
```
/opt/CA/ELMAgent/bin/caelmagent -b
```
Reboot the CA User Activity Reporting Module server.

Install with Enabled SAN Drives

The topic, Example: Set Up SAN Storage for CA User Activity Reporting Module, includes the recommendation to disable the SAN drives (LUNs) before installing the operating system on the CA User Activity Reporting Module appliance.

An alternative is to leave the SAN drives enabled but to modify the kick-start file, ca-elm-ks.cfg, with an ISO editing tool, after starting the operating system installation. The modification helps ensure that the install and boot are done from the local hard disk, not from the SAN.

To boot from the local disk (not SAN)

Boot the server with the OS installation DVD
Respond to the first prompt for keyboard type.
Press Alt-F2 to display the Anaconda/Kickstart prompt.

Type the following:

list-hardrives

The list of available drives displays, where the list resembles the following:

cciss/c0d0 - 68GB RAID 1 (cciss is HP Smart Array)
Sda - 500GB SAN  (sda - h is the SAN Multipathed) 
Sdb - 500GB SAN
Sdc - 500GB SAN
Sdd - 500GB SAN
Sde - 500GB SAN
Sdf - 500GB SAN
Sdg - 500GB SAN
Sdh - 500GB SAN

Identify the local hard drive. In this case, it is cciss/c0d0.
Take the following steps:
1. Open the CA User Activity Reporting Module operating system kickstart file, ca-elm-ks.cfg for edit. Use an ISO editor.
2. Locate the following line to edit:
```
bootloader --location=mbr --driveorder=sda,sdb
```
  Change it to the following:
```
bootloader --location=mbr --driveorder=cciss/c0d0
```
  This change specifies to boot from the local disk only.
3. Locate the following lines to edit:
```
clearpart --all --initlabel
part /boot --fstype "ext3" --size=100 
part pv.4 --size=0 -grow
```
  Change these lines to the following:
```
part /boot --fstype "ext3" --size=100 --ondisk cciss/c0d0
part pv.4 --size=0 --grow --ondisk cciss/c0d0
```
  This change to the partition definition lines helps ensure that the partitions are created on the cciss/c0d0 disk by name. Using --ondisk, replaces the existing $disk1 and $disk2 variables.
4. If appropriate for your case, remove the IF/When clause for the number of disk drives, retaining only the first set of disk commands (lines 57 - 65).
5. Save the new ISO image.
Exit the Anaconda prompt to return to the operating system installation prompts.
Continue with the installation, using the documented procedures.