How to reclaim the SAN switch port?

Written by DuEL Wednesday, 13 January 2010 12:18

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How to reclaim the SAN switch port? Let say we have a Windows host that running PowerPath with 2 x HBA installed and this server its mainly used for standby purpose, we would like to reclaim 1 of the switch port and the Host could still run with the Single HBAcard.

Here is the process that I did for my environment. First, identified the switch port on the second switch that the redundant or second HBA connected.

Please always ensure that the ports you will keep in use are cabled to separate switches for redundancy and that the zones on each switch map the HBA to each Storage Processor (SP) or Front Adapter (FA).

I would remove the redundant fibre cable connections at the beginning of the process. This is to avoid of removing the wrong cable after the fact. The zones you remove would show that the WWNs aren't logged in. The initiators you remove would show that they are not logged in. Of course, you can disabled the switch port and check on the switch physically, from the switch you should be able to see the switch port LED turn to ember light.

There is other method for the following work, but for mine. I preferred to use this way as it fit my environment and situation the best.

The basic process for removing an HBA or port is:

1.

Disable the desired host switch port.

(Please be careful on this step and be sure you know what you are doing if this activities going to impact production host. If you are not doing single initiator zoning, this will make you lose connectivity to your LUNs. If you have multiple initiators (Host WWPNs) in your zone config, then you may simply remove the members that you want removed.)

2.

De-register the WWN of the disabled HBA port from the array.

3.

When missing paths appear in PowerPath run the following from a command prompt to remove the dead paths from the configuration:

Run this command on the host level. C:\powermt display dev=all (You should see there is a dead path on the desired HBA card that you removed.)

Pseudo name=harddisk3 Symmetrix ID=0002800000000 Logical device ID=0112 state=alive; policy=SymmOpt; priority=0; queued-IOs=0 ============================================================== ---------------- Host --------------- - Stor - -- I/O Path - -- Stats --### HW Path I/O Paths Interf. Mode State Q-IOs Errors

============================================================== 5 port5\path0\tgt1\lun73 6 port6\path0\tgt0\lun73 c5t1d72 FA 4cA active dead c6t0d72 FA 13cA active alive 0 0 1 0

c:\powermt check force dev=all c:\powermt save

4.

You can now use the freed ports for other hosts.

5.

It is recommended to keep the symm / clariion configuration for certain period until you feel comfortable to remove and free up the SP or FA.