3Par OS Upgrade 3.1.3 – Part 1: Pre-Upgrade Planning

I have been updating one of our 3Par systems to 3Par OS 3.1.3 MU1. This short series of posts will cover the process to successfully upgrade a 3Par system to 3.1.3

There are a number of pre-upgrade tasks that need completing before an upgrade can begin these are listed below under two categories host based tasks and SAN based tasks.

 A) Host Tasks

1 Check compatibility of components – This is to ensure that you are running a tested configuration of components that have been proven to work together by HP. There are 2 ways to go about this. Firstly you can use SPOCK.  This site contains all the compatibility information you will need to complete your own checks. Or you can complete a host worksheet and return it to HP who will then verify the compatibility of all your components and firmware versions. The components you need to check are fairly standard to any SAN upgrade – Server OS, multipath software, HBA’s and fabric switch firmware versions. I was lucky I didn’t need to update any firmware versions in order to proceed.

2 Check load balancing is set to round robin – This is a requirement for any Windows servers running 2008 and using the native MS MPIO driver. I used a script to make this step quicker.

I used the Microsoft command line application mpclaim to view the multipath configuration. Specifically I ran mpclaim –s –d from the command line.

To run the command line on multiple servers remotely without having to logon I used psexec. You can download it from here . Here is an excellent article on how to use it: psexec guide

In this case I used it in the following way

A Choose the server you want to run the script from and create a folder on it called C:scripts. Copy psexec to this folder

B in C:scripts create a file called 3par_servers.txt. Populate this with a list of the servers you wish to check for multipath configuration

C Also in C:scripts create a batch fie called mpclaim.bat and enter the following command line into it mpclaim –s –d

D Finally, open a command line from the machine you wish to run the script on, change directory to C:scripts and then enter c:Scripts>psexec -c -f @C:scripts3par_servers.txt C:scriptsmpclaim.bat

E You should then see the window populate with the information you require. An example of the output is below:

\Server1

C:Windowssystem32>mpclaim -s -d

For more information about a particular disk, use ‘mpclaim -s -d #’ where # is the MPIO disk number.MPIO Disk   System Disk LB Policy   DSM Name

——————————————————————————-

MPIO Disk5   Disk 6       RR           Microsoft DSM

MPIO Disk4   Disk 5       RR           Microsoft DSM

MPIO Disk3   Disk 4       RR           Microsoft DSM

MPIO Disk2   Disk 3       RR           Microsoft DSM

MPIO Disk1   Disk 2       RR           Microsoft DSM

 

Check LB policy appears as RR for all volumes.

 

3 Windows MPIO Patches. Two patches needed applying to each Windows server running MS MPIO we had attached to the 3Par. The patches which are to ensure correct functioning of MS MPIO, in my case we pushed these out using WSUS.

  • KB275704 needs to be applied to Windows Server 2008, and 2008 R2
  • KB2821052 needs to be applied to Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2008 R2

B) SAN Tasks

The SAN tasks were much quicker than the host checks I just needed to check the following three things

 

1 Performance – The 3Par needs to be upgraded at a time of low utilisation, this is defined as the load on the CPU’s and ports being below 50% utilised.

  • Check CPU utilisation. statcpu -t -d 15 -iter 1 Must be less than 50%
  • Check port utilisation. statport -d 15 -iter 1 -ni

For each port, the average I/O, Kbytes per sec, needs to be less than 50%. The official documentation showed the following figures:

200,000 Kbytes per sec, for 4 Gb connections

400,000 Kbytes per sec, for 8 Gb connections ie less than 50%

 

2 Version Check – I just ran checkversion from the CLI and then checked in HP 3PAR Operating System Upgrade Pre-Planning Guide that the current version was on the upgrade path and if there were any special considerations .

 

3 Health Check – The system needs to be in a healthy state to allow an upgrade to go ahead so I ran a checkhealth from the command line and all came back healthy. If you do find any items flagged by the checkhealth you will need fix these items before proceeding with the upgrade.

That was all the pre upgrade tasks done so I went ahead booked in the upgrade with HP as only from releases post 3.1.3 onwards will the systems be customer upgradable.

 

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