Gear used in this “experiment”:

• Dell Poweredge server.
• Two Qlogic QLA2310 HBA’s.
• RHEL Server 5.3 x86.
• Two SAN’s presenting one LUN each.

Rough steps I took to get this working:

1. Make sure device mapper package is installed.
2. Present two LUN’s from two SAN’s.
3. Probe HBA’s for presented LUN’s.
4. Configure multipathing.

First and foremost, make sure qla2xxx driver is loaded. You also have to make sure you have device-mapper-multipath-0.4.7-23.el5 installed. Next, configure multipathing daemon so that it starts on boot:

[root@carbon ~]# chkconfig multipathd on

When that’s done you need to make the system aware of the presented LUN’s. One way to do so is to reboot the server. Another option is to force HBA scan:

[root@carbon ~]# echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/host1/scan

During this you should watch /var/log/messages to see if your LUN’s are detected. When done, make multipathd aware of the LUN’s:

[root@carbon ~]# multipath -v2 -d

The above command is a “dry run”. There will be no device map changes committed. You will only be shown device mapper changes that will be made. To commit device map changes run:

[root@carbon ~]# multipath -v2

Once this is done you can see what multipathd is seeing:

[root@carbon ~]# multipath -ll
mpath2 (3600508d311100a300000f00001a90000) dm-3 COMPAQ,HSV111 (C)COMPAQ
[size=15G][features=1 queue_if_no_path][hwhandler=0][rw]
\_ round-robin 0 [prio=100][enabled]
 \_ 1:0:3:1 sde 8:64 [active][ready]
 \_ 2:0:3:1 sdh 8:112 [active][ready]
\_ round-robin 0 [prio=20][enabled]
 \_ 1:0:2:1 sdd 8:48 [active][ready]
 \_ 2:0:2:1 sdg 8:96 [active][ready]
mpath1 (3600508c362d0a1250000900001490000) dm-2 COMPAQ,HSV111 (C)COMPAQ
[size=15G][features=1 queue_if_no_path][hwhandler=0][rw]
\_ round-robin 0 [prio=100][enabled]
 \_ 1:0:0:1 sdb 8:16 [active][ready]
 \_ 2:0:4:1 sdi 8:128 [active][ready]
\_ round-robin 0 [prio=20][enabled]
 \_ 1:0:1:1 sdc 8:32 [active][ready]
 \_ 2:0:1:1 sdf 8:80 [active][ready]

If everything looks good, you can create configuration file for multipathd. You will need to edit /etc/multipath.conf and depending on your environment, add or modify some parameters. The configuration file contains enough comments and examples to figure out what different parameters mean. When in doubt, consult the man pages.

First, add a blacklist section, which will make certain device exempt from multipathing. I have my internal drives listed in blacklist section:

blacklist {
        devnode "^sd[a-b].*"
        devnode "^(ram|raw|loop|fd|md|dm-|sr|scd|st)[0-9]*"
        devnode "^hd[a-z]"
}

Next, you are going to need device section. This is going to be specific to your SAN. The one below is for EVA5000. I got the parameters from HP’s device mapper package:

device {
        vendor                  "HP|COMPAQ"
        product                 "HSV1[01]1 \(C\)COMPAQ|HSV[2][01]0|HSV300"
        path_grouping_policy    group_by_prio
        getuid_callout          "/sbin/scsi_id -g -u -s /block/%n"
        path_checker            tur
        path_selector           "round-robin 0"
        prio_callout            "/sbin/mpath_prio_alua /dev/%n"
        rr_weight               uniform
        failback                immediate
        hardware_handler        "0"
        no_path_retry           12
        rr_min_io               100
}

You should also look at defaults section to make sure it is configured for your setup. Again, the parameters in mine are specific to EVA5000:

defaults {
        udev_dir                /dev
        polling_interval        10
        selector                "round-robin 0"
        path_grouping_policy    failover
        getuid_callout          "/sbin/scsi_id -g -u -s /block/%n"
        prio_callout            "/bin/true"
        path_checker            tur
        rr_min_io               100
        rr_weight               uniform
        failback                immediate
        no_path_retry           12
        user_friendly_names     yes
        bindings_file           "/var/lib/multipath/bindings"
}

Finally, you will need to specify configuration for the presented LUN’s. This applies to the multipaths section of multipath.conf file:

multipath {
        wwid                    3600508b4001031250000900001490000
        alias                   san1data
}
multipath {
        wwid                    3600508b400011c300000f00001a90000
        alias                   san2data
}

After you are done, restart multipathd and check output of multipath -ll command:

[root@carbon ~]# multipath -ll
san2data (3600508d311100a300000f00001a90000) dm-3 COMPAQ,HSV111 (C)COMPAQ
[size=15G][features=1 queue_if_no_path][hwhandler=0][rw]
\_ round-robin 0 [prio=100][active]
 \_ 1:0:3:1 sde 8:64 [active][ready]
 \_ 2:0:3:1 sdh 8:112 [active][ready]
\_ round-robin 0 [prio=20][enabled]
 \_ 1:0:2:1 sdd 8:48 [active][ready]
 \_ 2:0:2:1 sdg 8:96 [active][ready]
san1data (3600508c362d0a1250000900001490000) dm-2 COMPAQ,HSV111 (C)COMPAQ
[size=15G][features=1 queue_if_no_path][hwhandler=0][rw]
\_ round-robin 0 [prio=50][enabled]
 \_ 1:0:0:1 sdb 8:16 [active][ready]
 \_ 2:0:4:1 sdi 8:128 [active][ready]
\_ round-robin 0 [prio=20][enabled]
 \_ 1:0:1:1 sdc 8:32 [active][ready]
 \_ 2:0:1:1 sdf 8:80 [active][ready]

That should be it. You should test the setup by disabling paths to see if your LUN’s stay up.