R1.00
3/26/2014
VTrak
®
A-Class
R1.00
3/26/2014
1. Release Summary
This is a Service Release for the A-Class Shared Storage Appliance with firmware version
1.08.0000.00. It supports Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X. This release includes
support for Apple OSx 10.9. Linux support will follow shortly. The supported OS versions
are listed below. This release only provides English Language support. This will be
expanded in future releases.
This interim release does not currently support the Promise NAS Cluster Gateway and the
additions of Ex30 Nodes. This support will be added in the upcoming release.
Important Upgrade Note for MAC Users:
This Release of the VTrakFS SR1 Package (1.08.0000.00) requires the MAC Client user to uninstall the MAC Clients for either of the two previous releases – FCS (version 1.01.0000.00) or PR1 (version 1.05.0000.00). This means that you must FIRST uninstall using the VTrakFSClient from the FCS or PR1 package to uninstall the MAC Client, THEN use the current SR1 package to install the new one.
This document is applicable to the following PROMISE A-Class models:
Model
Description
VTrak A3800fSL
4U/24 FC, single controller with 2 FS Support for 4 Clients
VTrak A3800fDM
4U/24 FC, dual controller with 4 FS support for 10 Clients
The supported Client Operating Systems, the Client Packages, and the Multipath drivers
used for each for this release include:
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Vendor
Platform
Type
Client Package
Multipath
Microsoft
Windows Server 2008 R2
x64 VTrakFS Client 1.1.0 PerfectPath 4.1.0.2
Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
x64 VTrakFS Client 1.1.0 PerfectPath 4.1.0.2
Windows 7 x64 VTrakFS Client 1.1.0 Included in Client Windows 7 SP1 x64 VTrakFS Client 1.1.0 Included in Client Windows 8 x64 VTrakFS Client 1.1.0 Included in Client Windows 2012
Server
X64 VTrakFS Client 1.1.0 PerfectPath 4.1.0.2
Apple
OS X 10.7 x64 VTrakFS Client 1.2.0 Included in OS
OS X 10.8 x64 VTrakFS Client 1.2.0 Included in OS
OS X 10.9 x64 VTrakFS Client 1.2.0 Included in OS
The supported Promise Expansion subsystems include:
Vendor
Platform
Type
Promise
VTrak J630s 3U/16-bay 6Gbs SAS VTrak J830s 4U/24-bay 6Gbs SAS VTrak J930s 4U/60-bay 6Gbs SAS
The Upcoming Release will support the following Promise Ex30 RAID subsystems that can be
attached as “Nodes” to the A-Class SAN. This is not supported in this release. Please contact
Technical Support for information regarding special builds to add this feature in the current
release.
Vendor
Platform
Type
Supported Firmware
Promise VTrak E630f
3U/16-bay 6Gbs SAS HDD 4.10.0000.00, 10.13.2270.00 or higher
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2. Release version 1.08.0000.00
The following are changes that have been made since the 1.05.0000.00 Release.
2.1.
Firmware Specific Fixes
Fixed a defect seen where adding an A3800 to a switch that includes Ex30’s with a large number of
LUNs could cause the A3800 Controllers to crash .
Changed Event to indicate "Forced Offline" instead of "Dead" when a PD is forced offline.
Fixed defect where a controller might reboot again following a controller failover due to a heartbeat
timeout.
Fixed defect where the Slave controller could get held on reset while disabling "cache Mirroring" in the
subsytem
Changed Automatic firmware synchronization event from “critical” severity to “information”.
Fixed defect seen on some drives where a Medium Error on a drive could cause the drive to be marked
"Dead".
Fixed a defect where Logging into CLI or GUI, adding or deleting the FS license, or create a new file
system caused "unknown" severity Events to pop up
SAN Events have now been added
Fixed defect where a controller could be held on reset when downgrading the firmware to an earlier
build
Corrected BIOS version display
Fixed a defect where a Media Patrol could fail with PD's that are greater than 2 TB
Fixed BIOS date display for CLI command "ptiflash -a versioninfo"
Fixed defect where a controller could crash or reboot after relocating a Transport Ready PD to a free
slot.
Fixed defect where if you boot the A3800 before you boot an attached Jx30 JBOD, the arrays might not
come online without an additional reboot.
Fixed defect seen if you removed an array and its dedicated spare from the A3800 after transporting
it, then insert an Unconfigured disk to the slot where the spare was, a stale entry of that spare was
listed
2.2.
Software Specific Fixes
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3/26/2014
Fixed defect where refreshing a GUI page might shift to a different attached node when selecting
different options.
Improved highlighting on some GUI selections
Improved NTP service status in GUI
Added option in GUI to select DST (Daylight Saving Time)
Fixed defect where spare drive info wasn't available in multiple nodes
The Auto-configuration of PD's and LUN's has been changed for performance improvement.
Multiple GUI improvements and changes in display, help and configuration have been made
Change made to disable the stop, pause and resume operations for the region initialization
Fixed defect where the SAN wizard saw clients from a different network during discovery
Improvements to CLI commands and outputs
Fixed defect where replacing an AClass controller with a new one would lose the Quota and LDAP
settings
Added NTP management in the GUI
Change made to stop filesystem operations when drives fail or are removed during filesystem
formatting.
Fixed bug where the CLI init command didn't distinguish between LUN on A3800 or an attached
node.
Improvements made to Filesystem Management performance
Improvements made to setting time on the A3800
Added "stop" option when filesystem check is in progress.
Fixed defect where the Subnet Mask wouldn't change after updating.
Currently prevent user from adding more than the maximum 255 data groups
Fixed a defect where Background activities weren't displayed when background synchronization was
in progress.
Formatting status has been added to the filesystem info page
Added fragmentation level calculation
Indicate that the maximum LUN's supported.
Fixed a defect where the administrator rights was changed to viewer if the user restored factory
defaults in the GUI.
Added the ability to enable and disable “rgbyparent” for performance improvement * need to
change this according to implementation.
Added option to allow a user to move a lun from volume-group to another volume-group
Added events for filesystem operations - Creation, Deletion, Format.
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Enhanced the "defrag" command in the CLI
Fixed and occasional controller crash when doing NDIU
Fixed a bug where I/O might fail when expanding a filesystem while I/O is running
2.3.
Client Specific Fixes for Windows or Mac Clients
Fixed a problem seen when adding a MAC Client to an A3800 through a Promise SANLink, only one of the initiator entries of the SANLink were displayed. Note: this problem still exists on a SANLink 2. Fixed defect seen with MAC OSx 10.8 where a controller could crash and restart after periods of heavy I/O.
Fixed a defect where a MAC OSx 10.7.5 client could crash when mounting the file system.
Added case sensitivity to folder names which are supported in OSx.
Changed "Action" heading name to "File" on MAC Client to conform to MAC standards.
Additional language support including previously not supported European and Asian characters.
Added defrag CLI Support on the MAC Client
3. Current Product Limitations or Requirements
Description
Workaround/Solution
General A-Class Controller Information
Array Transport is not supported in this Release The A-Class only supports ALUA and LUN
Affinity Enabled
The A-Class supports a maximum of 32 LUNs per node. (only the primary node is supported until the next release).
Addressed in a future release. This current release only supports 32 LUNs in one AClass node.
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3/26/2014
Description
Workaround/Solution
The Auto configuration Wizard cannot configure a configuration with more than a 219 physical drives.
Use the advanced options to Manually configure the luns and use greater than 7 drives per disk array group.
SAN File System Information
The maximum folder level in the file access settings in the AClass GUI is 4. This will be improved in a future release.
User respective Client to View the folder or to create additional folders and files.
If a filesystem is mounted on a MAC OS 10.7 or 10.8 Mac client, the new volume cannot be shared through AFP/SMB "File Sharing" for other machines to access remotely through the network.
This problem was addressed and is working in Maverick’s OS 10.9.
If there is currently a system with LUN's
installed and I/O is running on them, attempting to expand the Filesystem may cause the I/O's to stop. The user should always stop any disk activity before expanding the filesystem to avoid this issue.
This was seen on some Clients with Qlogic HBA’s. Stop any disk activity before expanding a file system.
With Windows SAN clients, sometimes after the Filesystem Client is installed, the Windows Client isn't discovered. The user will see either 1) the client is not discovered by the GUI's setup wizard, or it shows the " ! warning" or "n/a " status after manually adding the SAN to the GUI or the CLI.
The most likely cause is that the client installed "bonjour" service needs to be restarted. This can be done by going to the Windows Task Manager or Control Panel and restarting the "bonjour" service.
In the Windows system Event log, the following error messages are generated when adding a Server or when mounting LUNs:
Virtual Disk Service (VDS) error ownership messages for "bw" volumes are listed after adding the server and rebooting.
Partmanager (partmgr) warnings for duplicate LUN disk signatures are listed after mounting the LUNs
The error messages can be ignored.
When a Client has two or more network cards or ports, the Primary Port must be assigned to the A-Class network connections in order for the A-Class Filesystem to be seen.
Use the Primary Port to attach the client to the A-Class.
R1.00
3/26/2014
Description
Workaround/Solution
Setting a folder to "squash_noroot" and mounting the filesystem in a Windows 8 Client will display the UID and GUID as 0 resulting in no root access.
Follow the instructions provided by the Promise Knowledge Base:
1. Enable LDAP from A-Class GUI, setup according to Windows AD server
2. Create a Windows AD user and assign uid/gid as 0
(Administrator should have knowledge about how to install Windows AD and how to
install UNIX )
3. Login Windows client using the Windows AD user with uid/gid 0
4. Input username/password of the Windows AD user with uid/gid 0
5. Mount A-Class volume After a Windows Active Directory user logs into
VTrak client and mounts the fs, and then logs out, a second Windows AD user cannot mount Vtrak client.
The second user will have to reboot the Windows Client in order to log in under these circumstances.
LDAP Users folders created on Windows client allow full permission to everyone until
configured in Windows.
Permission can be granted as follows: 1) create a new fs.
2) create LDAP “testgroup” which has two members, such as testuser1 and testuser2. 3) login as local administrator, remove everyone from mount point and add
"testgroup" & "owner" to it, then grant "testgroup" read and exec permission,
grant"owner" full permission.
4) logout and login as testuser1 or testuser2
GUI and CLI Information
In the GUI, if a user creates a Spare drive and later decides to change it from Global to
Dedicated or Dedicated to Global, the modifying action won’t succeed. It will need to be deleted and a new Spare created.
To change the Spare drive from Global to Dedicated or vice versa, delete the spare drive and create it with the desired configuration.
The GUI will show the default settings after a Spare drive is created instead of the actual Spare drive setting.
Actual Spare drive configuration can be viewed in the CLI.
UPS support not currently available in the GUI but will be available in the future. It is available in the CLI using the UPS command.
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Description
Workaround/Solution
SNMP support is currently not available in the GUI. The CLI supports only RAID and
enclosure functions just as the Ex30 products.
Full SNMP support for both the GUI and CLI will be available in a future release.
In the CLI, issuing the LUN command while Initialization is in progress will show drives as Faulty.
Check drive status with the LUN command only after the Initialization completes.
Currently the Vtrak Performance Monitor contains Internally generated command traffic on Port 0 in addition to the traffic of the FC ports. This will be changed in the next release.
Realize that the VTrak Performance monitor also contains internal command traffic.
Fibre channel stats as reported by the CLI command "fc -t stats" may report a non-zero InvalidWordSentCount. It is often of 510 but sometimes even a higher value.
The value display is cosmetic. The user just needs to confirm that the value is not incrementing.
Client Information
Internal LDAP support is currently not supported. This will be available in shortly to include all supported Operating Systems.
Use External LDAP – either Active Directory or Open Directory
Windows 7 and Windows 8 display the following harmless errors when the Client Package is installed:
1. module reporter (xx) " this is a redundant path to the lun"
2. Disk xxx has duplicate disk signature
Ignore the 2 messages on Windows 7 and 8 when installing the Client Package.
If you have a Windows Client version 1.1.0 installed on Windows 2008 R2 server with Domain Control, the VTrakFS GUI "Add SAN" wizard does not detect the new client.
If you add it manually, the client has a Status of Warning, and no OS Type or Client Version. The LMM refresh fails for client with "connect to client is failed" Message
Clients that are Domain Controllers’ are not supported in this release.
4. Contacting Technical Support
PROMISE Support Website at
http://www.promise.com/support/support_eng.asp
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3/26/2014
PROMISE Disclaimer
Notice:
Although PROMISE Technology, Inc. has attempted to ensure the accuracy of the content of this document; it is possible that this document may contain technical inaccuracies, typographical, or other errors. PROMISE Technology assumes no liability for any errors in this publication, and for damages, whether direct, indirect, incidental, and consequential or otherwise, that may result from such error, including, but not limited to loss of data or profits.
PROMISE Technology provides this publication “as is” without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including, but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. The published information in the manual is subject to change without notice. Promise Technology reserves the right to make changes in the product design, layout, and driver revisions without notification to its users. This version of this document supersedes all previous versions.
© 2014 PROMISE Technology, Inc. All Rights Reserved. PROMISE, the PROMISE logo, VTrak, SmartStor, SuperTrak, FastTrak, VessRAID, Vess, PerfectPATH, PerfectRAID, SATA150, ULTRA133 and GreenRAID are registered or pending trademarks of PROMISE Technology, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Information regarding products, services and offerings may be
