Iodrive duo driver download

HP IO Accelerator Driver and Management Software Version 3.2.3 Release Notes Abstract This document describes details about the 3.2.3 HP IO Accelerator driver release. This document also covers issues that might arise using this release. Part Number: 607716-007 March 2013 Edition: 7 © Copyright 2010, 2013 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. Confidential computer software. Valid license from HP required for possession, use or copying. Consistent with FAR 12.211 and 12.212, Commercial Computer Software, Computer Software Documentation, and Technical Data for Commercial Items are licensed to the U.S. Government under vendor’s standard commercial license. Microsoft®, Windows®, and Windows Server® are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Contents About this guide ........................................................................................................................... 5 Description ............................................................................................................................................... 5 Product naming ......................................................................................................................................... 5 System requirements ...................................................................................................................... 7 Hardware requirements .............................................................................................................................. 7 Sufficient system memory (RAM) ........................................................................................................ 7 Supported operating systems ...................................................................................................................... 8 Supported Linux operating systems .................................................................................................... 8 Supported Windows operating systems .............................................................................................. 8 Supported VMware operating systems ............................................................................................... 9 Supported Solaris operating systems .................................................................................................. 9 Supported devices ..................................................................................................................................... 9 IO Accelerator Gen2 devices ............................................................................................................ 9 IO Accelerator Gen2 Duo devices ................................................................................................... 10 IO Accelerator Gen1 devices .......................................................................................................... 10 IO Accelerator Gen1 Duo devices ................................................................................................... 10 Virtual Controller technology support ............................................................................................... 10 Upgrade notes ........................................................................................................................... 11 Firmware version ..................................................................................................................................... 11 Upgrading devices for IO Accelerator VSL 3.x.x ......................................................................................... 11 Upgrading from IO Accelerator VSL 2.x ..................................................................................................... 12 Do not downgrade device firmware ........................................................................................................... 12 Change log ................................................................................................................................ 14 3.2.3 change log .................................................................................................................................... 14 3.2.2 change log .................................................................................................................................... 16 Errata ........................................................................................................................................ 19 Overview ............................................................................................................................................... 19 General issues ........................................................................................................................................ 19 Do not disable CPUs after loading the IO Accelerator VSL driver ......................................................... 19 Improved hardware failure detection ................................................................................................ 19 Keep default MSI interrupts for better performance ............................................................................. 19 Improved thermal throttling ............................................................................................................. 19 Proper time on startup .................................................................................................................... 20 Firmware update might fail with a TDO mismatch error ...................................................................... 20 Device capacity might change after upgrade .................................................................................... 20 Management-specific issues ...................................................................................................................... 20 Do not run multiple fio-format commands in parallel ........................................................................... 20 Be sure the utilities match the IO Accelerator VSL software version ....................................................... 20 Utility failed while running fio-bugreport ........................................................................................... 21 Do not run fio-status during driver load ............................................................................................. 21 fio-status might not display failed devices .......................................................................................... 21 Windows-specific issues ........................................................................................................................... 21 fio-trim-config returns Unknown status ............................................................................................... 21 Specific partitions required for devices with capacities greater than 2 TB .............................................. 21 Contents 3 Forced detach sometimes required for Virtual Controller devices .......................................................... 22 IO Accelerator VSL software not loading or attaching devices after install ............................................. 22 Linux-specific issues ................................................................................................................................. 23 Software not installed post kernel update .......................................................................................... 23 Compiler Cache (ccache) causes IO Accelerator VSL software src.rpm rebuild failures on some distributions ................................................................................................................................................... 23 Rare error on driver unload using kernels older than 2.6.24 ............................................................... 23 ext4 in Kernel.org 2.6.33 or earlier might silently corrupt data when discard (trim) is enabled ................ 23 Kernels 2.6.34/35 don't handle switching interrupt types................................................................... 24 RHEL6 udevd warning .................................................................................................................... 24 RHEL6 gives a warn_slowpath message during device attach .............................................................. 24 Switching interrupt types with newer kernels might cause errors ........................................................... 25 kdump crashkernel requires additional memory for the IO Accelerator.................................................. 25 Do not use an IO Accelerator device as a kdump target ..................................................................... 25 VMware-specific issues ............................................................................................................................ 25 Hypervisors cannot directly use devices with capacities greater than 2 TB ............................................. 25 ESXI 5.0 Update 1 firmware upgrade .............................................................................................. 25 Using VMDirectPathIO with multiple-device products .......................................................................... 26 ESXi 5.0 injected installer allows installation on an IO Accelerator device ............................................ 26 The IO Accelerator driver cannot be installed as part of an ESXi 4.1 installation .................................... 26 vCenter cannot manage extents on IO Accelerator devices ................................................................. 26 Solaris-specific issues ............................................................................................................................... 26 Provide adequate RAM .................................................................................................................. 26 Acronyms and abbreviations ........................................................................................................ 27 Documentation feedback ............................................................................................................. 29 Contents 4 About this guide Description This document describes the following information about the 3.2.3 IO Accelerator driver release: • System requirements, including supported operating systems and hardware requirements • Supported IO Accelerator devices • Upgrade notes, including the firmware version required for this release • Changes since the last generally available release • Issues (errata) that might arise using this release CAUTION: Before upgrading to 3.x.x software and firmware, back up all data on the IO Accelerator. The 3.2.3 software and firmware reformat the drive, which causes data to be lost if not backed up. The 3.2.3 software is not backward compatible with 1.2.x or 2.x software. Product naming HP IO Accelerator Generation 1 devices include: • AJ876A: HP 80 GB IO Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class • AJ877A: HP 160 GB IO Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class • AJ878A: HP 320 GB IO Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class • AJ878B: HP 320 GB IO MLC Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class • BK836A: HP 640 GB IO MLC Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class IMPORTANT: Generation 1 IO accelerators for BladeSystem c-Class are only compatible with G7 and earlier server blades. • 600278-B21: HP 160GB Single Level Cell PCIe ioDrive for ProLiant Servers • 600279-B21: HP 320GB Multi Level Cell PCIe ioDrive for ProLiant Servers • 600281-B21: HP 320GB Single Level Cell PCIe ioDrive Duo for ProLiant Servers • 600282-B21: HP 640GB Multi Level Cell PCIe ioDrive Duo for ProLiant Servers • 641027-B21: HP 1.28TB Multi Level Cell PCIe ioDrive Duo for ProLiant Servers HP IO Accelerator Generation 2 devices include: • QK761A: HP 365GB IO MLC Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class • QK762A: HP 785GB IO MLC Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class • QK763A: HP 1.2 TB IO MLC Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class About this guide 5 IMPORTANT: Generation 2 IO accelerators for BladeSystem c-Class are only compatible with Gen8 and later server blades. • 673642-B21: HP 365 GB Multi Level Cell G2 PCIe ioDrive2 for ProLiant Servers • 673644-B21: HP 785 GB Multi Level Cell G2 PCIe ioDrive2 for ProLiant Servers • 673646-B21: HP 1205 GB Multi Level Cell G2 PCIe ioDrive2 for ProLiant Servers • 673648-B21: HP 2410 GB Multi Level Cell G2 PCIe ioDrive2 Duo for ProLiant Servers • 721458-B21: HP 3.0 TB Multi Level Cell G2 PCIe ioDrive2 for ProLiant Servers About this guide 6 System requirements Hardware requirements IMPORTANT: For complete hardware requirements and installation instructions, see the HP IO Accelerator Hardware Installation Guide. Sufficient system memory (RAM) The amount of RAM the driver requires varies, according to the average block size written to the device. Using the average block size in the following table, you can estimate the amount of system memory needed. CAUTION: Some operating systems only support 512 byte sector sizes. These operating systems include ESX and ESXi. For more information, see the "fio-format" section in the HP IO Accelerator User Guide for your operating system. IMPORTANT: Depending on your operating system, you can reduce worst-case memory use by formatting your IO Accelerator Gen1 device with a 4 KB sector size and thereby force the average written block size to be 4 KB or greater. However, some operating systems do not allow 4K sector sizes. Even if you cannot force 4 K sector sizes, the average write I/O size for most workloads is 4 KB or larger. For this reason, a 4 KB average write size is typically the most accurate representation of memory utilization. At various block sizes, the following table shows the upper limit of RAM that might be required of your system for every 100 GB of IO Accelerator Gen1 and IO Accelerator Gen2 device storage space used. Average block size (bytes) RAM usage for each 80 GB IO Accelerator (Megabytes) RAM usage for each 100 GB IO Accelerator (Megabytes) Minimum system RAM requirements for 160 GB IO Accelerator* (Gigabytes) 8,192 250 280 0.5 4,096 400 530 1 2,048 750 1030 1.7 1,024 1450 2000 3.2 512 2850 3970 6.4 Average block size (bytes) Minimum system RAM requirements for 320 GB IO Accelerator* (Gigabytes) Minimum system RAM requirements for 365 GB IO Accelerator* (Gigabytes) Minimum system RAM requirements for 1.2 TB IO Accelerator* (Gigabytes) 8,192 1 1 3.4 4,096 1.6 1.9 6.4 2,048 3 3.8 12.4 1,024 5.8 7.3 24 System requirements 7 Average block size (bytes) Minimum system RAM requirements for 320 GB IO Accelerator* (Gigabytes) Minimum system RAM requirements for 365 GB IO Accelerator* (Gigabytes) Minimum system RAM requirements for 1.2 TB IO Accelerator* (Gigabytes) 512 11.4 14.5 47.6 Average block size (bytes) Minimum system RAM Minimum system requirements for 785 GB requirements for 1.2 TB IO Accelerator* (Gigabytes) IO Accelerator* (Gigabytes) Minimum system RAM requirements for 2410 GB IO Accelerator* (Gigabytes) 8,192 2.2 3.4 6.7 4,096 4.2 6.4 12.7 2,048 8.1 12.4 24.7 1,024 15.7 24 48 512 31.2 47.6 95.3 * For IO Accelerator use only. Additional RAM is needed for system operating system and application. For example, if your system is equipped with a device (with two IO Accelerator Gen2 devices) that has a total capacity of 1,200 GB formatted to use 4,096 byte sectors, then your system might require as much as 6.4 GB of system RAM. Approximately 6.4 GB of system RAM (1200 GB capacity / 100 GB x 530 MB of RAM = 6,360 MB) might be used by the IO Accelerator driver. Supported operating systems All operating systems must be 64-bit x86 architecture to support IO Accelerator devices. HP strongly recommends that you run the latest Service Pack of a release. Supported Linux operating systems • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7, 6.0, 6.1. 6.2 • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 SP4, 11 SP1 • OEL 5.7, 6.0, 6.1, 6.2 Supported Windows operating systems • Microsoft® Windows® 2008 Server 64-Bit, R1 (with SP2 or higher) • Microsoft® Windows® 2008 Server 64-Bit, R2 IMPORTANT: IO Accelerator devices cannot be used as hibernation devices. Hyper-V support Hyper-V, as a Type 2 hypervisor on top of Windows 2008 R2, is supported. System requirements 8 IMPORTANT: With Hyper-V, only a 512 B sector size is supported on IO Accelerator devices. For more information on sector sizes on Windows operating systems, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2510009). Supported VMware operating systems • VMware ESX 4.0 Update 4, 4.1 Update 2 • VMware ESXi 4.0 Update 4, 4.1 Update 2 • VMware ESXi 5.0 IO Accelerator devices are only compatible with operating systems that are 64-bit x86 architecture. This requirement means the following scenarios are supported: • Using the IO Accelerator device as a VMFS datastore within the hypervisor and then sharing that storage with guest operating systems. Guest operating systems can be 32-bit or 64-bit because they are not directly using the IO Accelerator device. • Using VMDirectPathIO to allow a VM to directly use the IO Accelerator device. In this case, only supported operating systems can use the device. VMDirectPathIO is currently supported on Windows and Linux operating systems that are supported on HP IO Accelerator devices. The VSL software is only required for ESX or ESXi if you plan to use the IO Accelerator device as a VMFS datastore. If you are passing the devices through using VMDirectPathIO, you do not need to install the VSL on your the ESX or ESXi system. Instead, install the VSL on the guest system. For example, pass the device through to a Windows VM, and then install the Windows VSL on that VM. For installation instructions, see the HP IO Accelerator for Linux User Guide or the HP IO Accelerator for Windows User Guide. Supported Solaris operating systems • Solaris (x86, 64-bit) 10 Update 8, 10 Update 9, 10 Update 10 • Solaris (x86, 64-bit) 11 • OpenSolaris 2009.06 (x86, 64-bit) Supported devices This section lists the HP devices that are supported with this version of the IO Accelerator driver. IO Accelerator Gen2 devices • HP 365 GB IO MLC Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class • HP 785 GB IO MLC Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class • HP 1.2 TB IO MLC Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class IMPORTANT: Generation 2 IO accelerators for BladeSystem c-Class are only compatible with Gen8 and later server blades. • HP 365 GB Multi Level Cell G2 PCIe ioDrive2 for ProLiant Servers System requirements 9 • HP 785 GB Multi Level Cell G2 PCIe ioDrive2 for ProLiant Servers • HP 1205 GB Multi Level Cell G2 PCIe ioDrive2 for ProLiant Servers • HP 3.0 TB Multi Level Cell G2 PCIe ioDrive2 for ProLiant Servers IO Accelerator Gen2 Duo devices HP 2410 GB Multi Level Cell G2 PCIe ioDrive2 Duo for ProLiant Servers IO Accelerator Gen1 devices • HP 80 GB IO Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class • HP 160 GB IO Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class • HP 320 GB IO Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class • HP 320 GB IO MLC Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class • HP 640 GB IO MLC Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class IMPORTANT: Generation 1 IO accelerators for BladeSystem c-Class are only compatible with G7 and earlier server blades. • HP 160GB Single Level Cell PCIe ioDrive for ProLiant Servers • HP 320GB Multi Level Cell PCIe ioDrive for ProLiant Servers IO Accelerator Gen1 Duo devices • HP 320 GB Single Level Cell PCIe ioDrive Duo for ProLiant Servers • HP 640 GB Multi Level Cell PCIe ioDrive Duo for ProLiant Servers • HP 1.28 TB Multi Level Cell PCIe ioDrive Duo for ProLiant Servers Virtual Controller technology support Virtual Controller technology is supported on Windows and Linux operating systems. The following devices support Virtual Controller technology and will result in the following approximate capacities when the device has been configured for virtual devices. Device Number of virtual Capacity per virtual devices device Combine capacities 785 GB MLC G2 PCIe ioDrive2 2 367.5 GB 735 GB 1205 GB MLC G2 PCIe ioDrive2 2 577.5 GB 1155 GB 2410 GB MLC G2 PCIe ioDrive2 4 577.5 GB 2310 GB System requirements 10 Upgrade notes Firmware version This version of the IO Accelerator driver is compatible with firmware archive version 109322. When this archive file is used, newer IO Accelerator devices, such as the IO Accelerator Gen2 device, are updated to firmware version 107004. Previous devices, such as the IO Accelerator Gen1 device, are updated to firmware version 107006 or 107007 (HP IO Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class). After February 19, 2013, all IO Accelerators ship with firmware version 7.1.13.109322 or higher. This firmware version only works with VSL 3.2.2 or higher. If you are installing a recently purchased or a replacement IO Accelerator into a system that already has IO Accelerators installed, then you must upgrade the firmware on the previously installed devices to 7.1.13.109322 or higher. You must also upgrade the VSL to 3.2.2 or higher. Upgrading the firmware and VSL on cards that were running firmware versions 6.x.x or higher and VSL 3.x.x or higher is NOT data destructive. However, HP recommends that you back up any data on the device before performing the upgrade. The latest supported version of the firmware and VSL can be found on the HP website (http://www.hp.com). Upgrading devices for IO Accelerator VSL 3.x.x CAUTION: You cannot downgrade an HP IO Accelerator device firmware to an earlier version after you have upgraded the device. CAUTION: Upgrading IO Accelerator devices that were previously configured for VSL 1.x.x or 2.x.x to work with VSL 3.x.x requires a low-level media format of the device. No user data is maintained during the media format process. Be sure to backup all data on your IO Accelerator device as instructed before upgrading the firmware. Version 3.2.3 of the HP IO Accelerator VSL supports new features, including the latest generation of IO Accelerator architecture and improved flashback protection. These features require the latest version of the firmware. Every IO Accelerator device in a system running 3.2.3 or later must be upgraded to the latest version of the firmware. For example, if you have a system running 2.3.1 HP IO Accelerator VSL with IO Accelerator devices previously installed, and you want to install new IO Accelerator Gen2 devices (that require the latest version of the firmware), then you must upgrade all of the existing devices to the latest firmware version. Upgrade path IMPORTANT: When running multiple firmware upgrades in sequence (such as going from 1.2.7 to 2.2.0 to 2.3.1), after each subsequent firmware upgrade you must reboot the system, load the IO Accelerator driver (if it does not automatically load with your operating system), and attach each device. Depending on the current version of your HP IO Accelerator device, to preserve the internal structure of the device, you might have to perform multiple upgrades. The following path is the minimum upgrade path that Upgrade notes 11 you must follow. Upgrade the HP IO Accelerator VSL software on the system, and upgrade the firmware to the compatible version in the following order: 1.2.4 > 1.2.7 > 2.2.3 > 3.2.x For example, if your device is using the firmware for IO Accelerator VSL version 1.2.7, upgrade to 2.2.3 (both IO Accelerator VSL and compatible firmware) and then continue on the path. For VSL upgrade information for the HP IO Accelerator, see the HP IO Accelerator Release Notes on the HP website (http://www8.hp.com/us/en/support-drivers.html) for each version. General upgrade instructions, including the firmware update instructions, are available in the HP IO Accelerator User Guide for each operating system. Overformatting not supported The –o overformat option is not supported in the 3.x.x VSL software. All upgraded HP IO Accelerator devices are formatted to the maximum advertised capacity, regardless of whether the device was overformatted prior to the upgrade. Upgrading from IO Accelerator VSL 2.x CAUTION: Upgrading devices previously configured for IO Accelerator VSL 2.x or earlier to work with VSL 3.2.3 requires a firmware upgrade and a low-level media format of the device. User data is destroyed during the format process. Be sure to back up all data as instructed. As shown in the Upgrade Path section, you can upgrade your IO Accelerator device to the current firmware version from any firmware version that is released with IO Accelerator VSL software version 2.3.1 or later. If the firmware version you are upgrading from has a different major version number than the current firmware for this release, then you will see a warning that the upgrade might require a format. If your device is configured with the following firmware versions, then it will require a low-level format (which erases the user data on the device) after you upgrade the firmware: • IO Accelerator VSL version 2.3.1: Firmware version 5.0.7.101971 • IO Accelerator VSL version 2.3.10: Firmware version 5.0.7.107053 In the firmware versions shown above, the major version number is 5 (the first number). The firmware major version number for this 3.2.3 IO Accelerator VSL release is 7. It can take an extended period of time to format each device, depending on the wear on the device. If 2.x versions of the IO Accelerator VSL software were supported on your operating system, then you can consult the appendix of the IO Accelerator user guide for that platform for more information on upgrading the previously configured devices. Do not downgrade device firmware New IO Accelerator devices are shipped with recent firmware versions, often the minimum version required for the device. CAUTION: Do not downgrade the IO Accelerator device to an earlier version of the firmware. Earlier versions of the firmware might not be compatible with the device, and downgrading the firmware might result in data loss. If you must downgrade your firmware, contact HP Customer Support (http://www.hp.com/support) for compatibility information and to discuss your use case. Upgrade notes 12 If you are installing new IO Accelerator devices in a system using older devices and firmware, upgrade the older devices to the latest firmware and driver as a best practice. Upgrade notes 13 Change log 3.2.3 change log This change log documents the changes made from 3.2.2 to 3.2.3, which includes the following: • HP-UX is not supported with this release. • Added support for Windows Server 2003. For more information, see "Supported operating systems (on page 8)." • Added support for 3.0 TB devices. For more information, see "Supported devices (on page 9)." • Change to fio-sure-erase so devices maintain current formatting parameters rather than reverting to the default parameters. Added an option (-t) that resets the device format parameters to the default settings. Fixed the following issues: • Change to default setting of use_workqueue parameter Issue: When the use_workqueue parameter was changed to a default value of 0 in VSL version 3.2.2, it exposed an issue with certain Linux kernels that resulted in decreased write performance with file systems and other operations that use Asynchronous IO or libaio and performed FLUSH functions. Resolution: The issue in these kernels no longer impacts write performance. • Incorrect load average Issue: The reported Load average in Linux was incorrect due to a process (fct0-smp) in a constant state D (reporting a load of 1). Resolution: Devices now only report a load of 1 while in use. • Recommendation not to upgrade certain devices Issue: Read error issue with 320 GB ioDrive and 640 GB ioDrive Duo devices on IO Accelerator VSL version 3.2.2. This negatively affected read and write activity, and the products might enter reduced write mode. Resolution: Restored the behavior of previous releases. HP recommends upgrading those devices to this IO Accelerator VSL release. • Powercut issue with Virtual Controller devices Issue: Powercut feature not working on Virtual Controller devices. Some in-flight data might have been lost in a power loss event. Resolution: Powercut feature now works on all Virtual Controller devices. HP recommends upgrading to this release if you are using Virtual Controller technology. • Virtual Controller logs reversed Issue: Virtual Controller operating system event log messages were reversed for splitting and merging. The devices were split or merged as expected, but the logs were incorrect. Resolution: Logs indicate splits and merges correctly. • Virtual Controller conversions failing if unsupported devices installed Change log 14 Issue: Splitting and merging Virtual Controller configurations without specifying the device would fail if unsupported devices are installed. Resolution: Devices that do not support Virtual Controller configuration are now ignored and the conversion is successful. • Additional memory allocated Issue: When attaching a freshly formatted device, IO Accelerator VSL version 3.2.2 allocated more initial memory than was required. This was more evident on a newly formatted device that was not in use. Resolution: The VSL software now allocates the correct amount of memory. • Power throttle warning on products with one device Issue: A power throttling warning appeared in fio-status every time there was a power throttling event. Resolution: Power throttling is the correct behavior in these circumstances, but the messages are now informational and not warnings. • Issues when interrupting fio-format Issue: If the fio-format utility was interrupted while formatting a device, then the device might become unusable. You could recover a device by using the fio-sure-erase utility. • Resolution: Added a notice to the utility stating that users should not interrupt the fio-format process and how to recover from a failed format by using fio-sure-erase. HP does not recommend interrupting the fio-format process. Utility interrupting firmware updates Issue: Running fio-status while fio-update-iodrive was updating a device would cause the update to fail. Resolution: The fio-update-iodrive utility now prevents other utilities from disrupting the update process. • Failed firmware upgrade not reported Issue: The fio-update-iodrive utility might display a success message even through firmware update failed. Resolution: The fio-update-iodrive utility now only displays a success message if the device is successfully upgraded. • Problem updating multiple ioDrive duo devices Issue: Upgrading multiple ioDrive Duo devices in a single fio-update-iodrive command would fail with error Device is missing midprom data. Resolution: Updating multiple devices in a single command is now successful. • Utilities and VSL software mismatch error Issue: When you updated the IO Accelerator VSL software, but did not update the utilities, the utilities would not run and would return an error about an API mismatch. • Resolution: The installed VSL utilities should still match the IO Accelerator VSL version, but the error message is now more informative. For example: Error: This version of <utility> is not compatible with the running driver. Please install a <utility> that matches the driver's version. Reported memory grew on each attach Change log 15 Issue: The reported memory in fio-status used by the IO Accelerator VSL version 3.2.2 for each device grew each time a device was reattached. Actual memory used was not affected. Resolution: Reported memory usage now remains as expected every time a device is reattached. • Interrupt affinity not working in the Windows OS Issue: The interrupt affinity did not work in the Windows OS even when the operating system reports that the affinity was set. Resolution: The IO Accelerator VSL software now uses the interrupt affinity settings and the affinity works as expected. • Performance with large block sizes in VMware environments Issue: IO Accelerator performance was negatively affected when using large device block sizes (>128K) in VMware hypervisors, especially in servers with multiple sockets. Resolution: Performance is now improved in VMware environments when using large block sizes. Fixed issues affecting other software: • Caching devices becoming inaccessible Issue: While running directCache with VSL software and Windows operating systems, a memory reporting error caused bound devices to become inaccessible. Resolution: The VSL software no longer has a memory reporting error. • Unable to bind to partitions Issue: directCache is unable to bind to a partition on an IO Accelerator device and returns an invalid device error. Resolution: directCache now binds to partitions on IO Accelerator devices. • fio-status utility hanging on high throughput Issue: When fio-status is run on multiple bound devices (using directCache) during high throughput, the fio-status utility hangs until the high I/Os stop. Resolution: The utility no longer hangs during periods of high throughput. • Benign but alarming error message Issue: A failed assertion message appeared with the dc-disable utility output. You could safely ignore this message. Resolution: The message no longer appears. • fio-agent does not initialize in CentOS Issue: The fio-agent service failed to load the shared VSL library (libvsl) on CentOS and therefore failed to initialize. Resolution: The library now initializes on all supported platforms. 3.2.2 change log In addition to various improvements, the following are changes made to the IO Accelerator VSL Software from 3.1.5 to 3.2.2, including: • Expanded operating system support, see Supported Operating Systems. For more information, see "Supported operating systems (on page 8)." Change log 16 • Due to a known issue, Windows Server 2003 is not supported with this release of the IO Accelerator VSL. • Changes to the firmware archive filename and distribution. • o When using the Windows and Solaris operating systems, the firmware archive file is now distributed as a separate file, and no longer embedded within the IO Accelerator VSL installation package. o When using the Linux operating system, the firmware is still distributed as a package, but is now also distributed as a separate firmware archive file. o The firmware archive filename convention is now fusion_<version>-<date>.fff. New Virtual Controller feature available for Windows and Linux operating systems. o For complete information on using the feature, see the Windows or Linux HP IO Accelerator VSL user guide. o With Virtual Controller technology each physical IO Accelerator device is split into two (virtual) logical devices. Splitting the IO Accelerator device into two virtual devices has the following implications: — Latency: There is no effect on latency. — Throughput: The total peak I/O bandwidth of the device is approximately the same. — IOPS: Depending on the use of the virtual devices (especially the average I/O size), the peak IOPS for each virtual device is about the same for a non-split device. The combined peak IOPS of the two virtual devices can be nearly double that of a non-split device. For more information, see the HP IO Accelerator VSL user guide for your platform. — Capacity: Due to virtualization overhead, the combined capacity of the two virtual devices is slightly less than that of a single-controller device. For a list of compatible devices and their Virtual Controller capacities, see "Virtual Controller technology support (on page 10)." • Added WIN_LOG_VERBOSE parameter to the Windows IO Accelerator VSL software. This parameter expands the extent of the IO Accelerator VSL error log messages in the event log and provides additional crucial information for troubleshooting any issues. • Change to the device numbering in when using the Windows OS. The /dev/fctx device number used in the command-line utilities is now assigned as the IO Accelerator VSL software initially loads. • The NUMA affinity parameters in the Windows and Linux operating systems now use the PCI bus number to set the affinity, and you must update any existing affinity configuration. For more information, see the user guide for your platform. • Separate management software releases. Starting with this IO Accelerator VSL software release, the following management software is no longer included as part of the IO Accelerator VSL release: o Management SDK, including: — libfio-dev — libfio-doc — libvsl-dev — libvsl-doc o SMI-S, including: — fio-remote-util — fio-SMIS Change log 17 — fusion-cimprovider o SNMP, including: — fio-SNMP-agent — fio-SNMP-mib These management tools will be released as part of the IO Accelerator software releases. The Windows versions of these tools are part of the Windows IO Accelerator software installer. The versions for all other platforms will be distributed as individual packages along with the IO Accelerator software release. If you have any issues finding these packages, contact HP Customer Support. Change log 18 Errata Overview This section describes issues you might encounter when using the IO Accelerator driver release. General issues Do not disable CPUs after loading the IO Accelerator VSL driver If you plan to take any CPUs offline (including disabling Hyper-Threading Technology), you should do so before the IO Accelerator VSL driver loads and begins to use the available CPUs. If you disable any CPUs that were being used by the IO Accelerator VSL software, then the software might hang. Improved hardware failure detection Due to refined capabilities in detecting issues, some devices that are upgraded to work with IO Accelerator VSL software version 3.2.3 might exhibit failures that were not detected previously. You might see the following error message in the system log: <device-name> some pads are write protected This failure prevents potential data loss that might occur with continued use of the device. If your IO Accelerator device fails with this error message, contact HP Customer Support. For United States and worldwide contact information, see the Contact HP website (http://www.hp.com/go/assistance). Keep default MSI interrupts for better performance With IO Accelerator version 3.x and later, all IO Accelerator devices changed from using legacy-style interrupts to MSI. This improves performance while decreasing CPU load. If you want to continue using legacy interrupts, set the disable_msi VSL module parameter value to 1. For examples on setting module parameters, see the "Module parameters" section in the HP IO Accelerator User Guide for your operating system (Windows uses the fio-config utility and the parameter is in all caps: DISABLE_MSI). In limited situations, using legacy interrupts with the 3.x.x series driver might degrade performance as much as 10% compared to previous releases. With the 3.x.x series driver, HP strongly recommends that you use MSI (default setting) for optimal performance. Improved thermal throttling With improvements to thermal throttling on some devices, the IO Accelerator VSL software now throttles or shuts down the device based on the device's NAND board temperature. The NAND board temperatures are currently not exposed in the management interfaces, but a throttling or shutdown event is visible in the Errata 19 operating system logs. For more information on the NAND board temperature thresholds for specific devices, see the HP IO Accelerator Hardware Installation Guide. Proper time on startup If the IO Accelerator device does not boot up with the proper time set on the system, then the software might delay starting, because the driver self-tunes to the difference between the reflected age data and actual age of data. If the time is set backward on a running system, this setting might result in decreased card performance for the lesser of one day or the amount the time is set backward. Proper time is within a few minutes of actual time. Firmware update might fail with a TDO mismatch error An IO Accelerator device firmware upgrade might fail with the following error: ERROR: TDO mismatch This error generally occurs when upgrading multiple devices at the same time. To resolve this issue, update the devices again, but perform the update one device at a time. For IO Accelerator Duo devices, upgrade each IO Accelerator device (on the duo product) individually. Do not reboot the system until the devices have been successfully updated. Device capacity might change after upgrade If you upgrade a device that was previously formatted using a much earlier version of IO Accelerator VSL software, then the device capacity might change. The capacity difference might be minimal (for example, 160.94 GB becomes 160 GB), but it can be an issue if the device was part of an application or database that expects the same capacity. To solve this issue, use the -o (overformat) option with fio-format. For example: fio-format -o 160940M /dev/fct1 Management-specific issues Do not run multiple fio-format commands in parallel HP does not recommend running multiple instances of fio-format commands at the same time. If you run multiple commands in parallel, one or more of the commands might fail, which can cause the device to fail. To avoid this issue, either run multiple commands in sequence or, if you are formatting all devices to the same settings, specify multiple devices within one command. Be sure the utilities match the IO Accelerator VSL software version When you install this version of the IO Accelerator VSL software, be sure that you install the utilities that go with this version. Each set of utilities is designed to work with a specific version of the IO Accelerator VSL software. Errata 20 If you use a set of utilities that does not match the IO Accelerator VSL software, you might see an error in the command line or logs such as unhandled ioctl or Error: This version of <utility> is not compatible with the running driver. To solve this issue, reinstall the utilities using the package with the correct version number. Utility failed while running fio-bugreport The fio-bugreport utility uses other utilities to create the report. Depending on the operating system, some of these additional utilities might not be available and the fio-bugreport displays an error that a fio utility failed or was not found. The fio-bugreport utility is designed to continue even if a component fails. The report is still created. Do not run fio-status during driver load Run the fio-status utility after the driver has loaded and not during driver load. Running the fio-status utility while the driver is loading might result in the following message: Missing MIDS. Coming up in minimal mode. If you receive this message while running the fio-status utility during driver loading, unload and reload the driver, and then run the fio-status utility after the driver has loaded. fio-status might not display failed devices When an IO Accelerator device fails, occasionally, it does not appear in the fio-status report. If your device has failed, contact HP support (http://www.hp.com/go/assistance). Windows-specific issues fio-trim-config returns Unknown status The fio-trim-config utility returns Unknown status on Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2012. Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2012 have native TRIM support and therefore do not use this utility. While you should only use this utility with Windows Server 2003, you will not harm the system by running it on newer versions of Windows, and you can safely ignore the Unknown status if you do run it on a later version. Specific partitions required for devices with capacities greater than 2 TB Devices with capacities greater than 2 TB, such as the 3.0 TB MLC ioDrive2 device, require the following partition types: • Single device: GPT (GUID Partition Table) • Multiple devices (for a RAID configuration): Dynamic Disk These devices also require sector sizes greater than 512 B (HP recommends 4 KB sectors). When you format these devices using fio-format, the default sector size is 4 KB. Errata 21 Forced detach sometimes required for Virtual Controller devices You might need to use the force option (-f) to detach one or more Virtual Controller devices in the following circumstances: • Busy Device: If you attempt to detach a device using fio-detach and it fails with a status of device busy, then you should first try to detach again. If detach fails again, you might need to use the force option. • Raid Configuration: If an IO Accelerator device is in a Virtual Controller configuration and is part of RAID array, one of the virtual devices may not detach because the RAID management tool is using the device. Make sure the RAID volume is offline. If the device still does not detach, you must force the device to detach using the force option in fio-detach. A forced detach can result in an unclean shutdown and reattach might take longer than usual. IO Accelerator VSL software not loading or attaching devices after install If the IO Accelerator VSL software is not loading or attaching IO Accelerator devices after installation (including an upgrade), make sure that you have rebooted the system after the installation. If a reboot does not solve the problem, follow the manual installation procedure in the appendix of the user guide for Windows. Repeat this procedure to install each device. Conversion to GPT or Dynamic disk terminates Logical Disk Manager Admin Service This issue appears in any of these cases: • Converting a Basic partition to GPT • Converting a Basic partition to Dynamic Volume • Switching between GPT and Dynamic Volume, either way The message is: The Logical Disk Manager Administrative Service terminated unexpectedly. Restart the 'Virtual Disk' service. This problem occurs only with Windows Server 2003. If the IO Accelerator devices are to be used in GPT or Dynamic mode, the following process should be done during the initial setup. This process also recovers devices that have had a failed conversion attempt. CAUTION: To avoid loss of data, be sure to back up any existing data on your devices. This procedure destroys any existing data on your devices. 1. For each IO Accelerator device in the system that is to be converted, use the management software to detach the drive and perform a low-level format. For more information, see the HP IO Accelerator Management Tool User Guide. 2. Restart the computer. 3. Go to Disk Management and then select Initialize Disk. 4. Right-click and then select Convert to GPT (or Convert to Dynamic Disk). Errata 22 Linux-specific issues Software not installed post kernel update When the IO Accelerator VSL software is installed for a specific kernel version and the kernel version is changed for any reason, the VSL must be reinstalled to work with the new kernel version. RHEL5 has some processes that minimize the need to reinstall the software after kernel upgrade. Compiler Cache (ccache) causes IO Accelerator VSL software src.rpm rebuild failures on some distributions If the ccache package is installed, rebuilding the IO Accelerator VSL software src.rpm might fail with an error similar to the following: CC [M] /root/fio/iomemory-vls-<version>/root/usr/src/iomemory-vsl/driver_init.o /root/fio/iomemory-vls-<version>/root/usr/src/iomemory-vsl/driver_init.c :116: error: initializer element is not constant [...] To allow the VSL to rebuild, remove the ccache package or disable ccache. Rare error on driver unload using kernels older than 2.6.24 A bug in Linux kernels prior to 2.6.24 can cause a general protection fault or other kernel error when the IO Accelerator driver is unloaded. This bug also affects non-HP drivers. The bug has been resolved in newer kernels. Because this is a bug in the Linux kernel, HP cannot resolve this issue for older kernels. ext4 in Kernel.org 2.6.33 or earlier might silently corrupt data when discard (trim) is enabled CAUTION: HP does not support the use of ext4 in Kernel.org 2.6.33 or earlier. Ext4 in Kernel.org 2.6.33 or earlier might silently corrupt data when discard is enabled. The ext4 filesystem in the Kernel.org kernel 2.6.33 and earlier contains a bug where the data in a portion of a file might be improperly discarded (set to all 0x00) under some workloads. Use Version 2.6.34 or newer to avoid this issue. For more information, see the patch (http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=b90f687018e6d6 ) and bug report (https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15579). The fix is included in RHEL6 pre-release kernel kernel-2.6.32-23.el6. The eventual release RHEL6 kernel is not affected by this issue. Discard support was added to the kernel.org mainline ext4 in Version 2.6.28 and was enabled by default. For fear of damaging some devices, discard was set to default to disabled in Version 2.6.33-rc1 and was back ported to 2.6.31.8 and 2.6.32.1. For more information, see the kernel patch (http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=5328e635315734d). Errata 23 Kernels 2.6.34/35 don't handle switching interrupt types Linux kernels around 2.6.34/35 might have problems processing interrupts if the driver is loaded using one interrupt type, unloaded, and then loaded again using a different interrupt type. The primary symptom is that the IO Accelerator device is unusable and the kernel logs have errors containing doIRQ. For example, the following sequence on an affected system would likely result in errors: 1. Load the driver with a default of disable_msi=1 which selects APIC interrupts: $ modprobe iomemory-vsl $ modprobe -r iomemory-vsl 2. Load the driver and enable MSI interrupts: $ modprobe iomemory-vsl disable_msi=0 To work around this issue, if you see the error, reboot the system. Also, always load with the same interrupt type selected. To change between interrupt types, reboot the system first. RHEL6 udevd warning When using an IO Accelerator under RHEL6 (or any Linux distribution with udev script version 147 or later), udevd might emit the following messages: udevd[154]: worker [19174] unexpectedly returned with status 0x0100 udevd[154]: worker [19174] failed while handling '/devices/virtual/block/fioa' These messages are innocuous, and you can ignore them. RHEL6 gives a warn_slowpath message during device attach When attaching an IO Accelerator device under RHEL6, you might see log messages similar to the following: kernel: ------------[ cut here ]-----------kernel: WARNING: at fs/fs-writeback.c:967 __mark_inode_dirty+0x108/0x160() (Tainted: P ---------------- ) . . . [<ffffffff8106b857>] warn_slowpath_common+0x87/0xc0 [<ffffffff8106b8aa>] warn_slowpath_null+0x1a/0x20 . . . This is due to a bug in the 2.6.32 kernel, and the messages can safely be ignored. Errata 24 Switching interrupt types with newer kernels might cause errors With newer Linux kernels, switching interrupt types after initial driver load might cause the kernel to report doIRQ errors. As a workaround, reboot your system before loading the driver with the new interrupt type specified. kdump crashkernel requires additional memory for the IO Accelerator With the IO Accelerator driver installed, kdump might fail to generate a complete dump due to a lack of reserved memory. To ensure that you have enough memory, increase the memory allocated to the crashkernel. The amount of memory required varies, depending on your kernel version and the formatted sector sizes (more RAM is required for 512B sector sizes than for 4K sectors). You can format the device sector size, using the fio-format command. As a best practice, increase the crashkernel reserve by approximately 50 to 250 MB of RAM, depending on your configuration. Do not use an IO Accelerator device as a kdump target Do not direct kdump to dump the crash information to an IO Accelerator device. The IO Accelerator VSL software does not load in the kdump crashkernel, and IO Accelerator devices are not supported as kdump targets. VMware-specific issues Hypervisors cannot directly use devices with capacities greater than 2 TB Because the VMFS in VMware hypervisors do not directly support devices with capacities greater than 2 TB, you cannot use all of the capacity of a 3.0 TB MLC ioDrive2 device when using the device as a LUN. You must down-format the device to 2 TB using fio-format. For example, (using SSH): fio-format -s 2T /dev/fct1 You can use the entire capacity of the 3.0 TB MLC ioDrive2 device if you use VMDirectPathIO/PCI Passthrough to pass the device through to a guest OS that supports devices with capacities greater than 2 TB. ESXI 5.0 Update 1 firmware upgrade The fio-update-iodrive.py remote script is currently unsupported on ESXi 5.0 Update 1. To perform a firmware update on ESXi 5.0 Update 1, use the fio-update-iodrive utility as documented in the HP IO Accelerator user guide for VMware ESX and ESXi. Errata 25 Using VMDirectPathIO with multiple-device products Some products contain multiple IO Accelerator devices on one PCI adapter, such as the IO Accelerator Duo device. The IO Accelerator VSL does not support splitting the two IO Accelerator devices between two functions or virtual machines. The following scenarios are supported: • Both IO Accelerator devices are used as a VMFS datastore in ESX or ESXi. • Both IO Accelerator devices are passed through (using VMDirectPathIO) to the same virtual machine. ESXi 5.0 injected installer allows installation on an IO Accelerator device Do not install the host OS on an IO Accelerator device. IO Accelerator devices are not designed to be bootable. The ESXi injected installer permits you to install the OS on an IO Accelerator device, but the installation will fail on reboot. IO Accelerator devices are only labeled as a VMware Block Device in the installer screen. Make sure to select a bootable device during the installation. The IO Accelerator driver cannot be installed as part of an ESXi 4.1 installation The IO Accelerator driver must be installed on an existing ESXi host system. vCenter cannot manage extents on IO Accelerator devices You cannot use vSphere vCenter to manage extents on IO Accelerator devices, including growing or spanning extents. However, you can connect directly to the host using the vSphere client and manage extents on IO Accelerator devices. Solaris-specific issues Provide adequate RAM The IO Accelerator VSL might use a large amount of system RAM. If enough RAM is not available, the system will crash. For RAM requirements, see "Hardware requirements (on page 7)." As the system runs out of RAM, it might generate the following message: verify: bad magic header 0, wanted acca at file /dev/rdsk/c6d0p0 offset 212606976, length 0 Errata 26 Acronyms and abbreviations CIM common information model DLL dynamic link library MIB management information base MLC multilevel cell MSI Message Signaled Interrupt PCIe peripheral component interconnect express RHEL Red Hat Enterprise Linux RPM Red Hat Package Manager SLC single-level cell SLES SUSE Linux Enterprise Server VM Virtual Machine VMFS virtual machine file system Acronyms and abbreviations 27 VSL virtual storage layer Acronyms and abbreviations 28 Documentation feedback HP is committed to providing documentation that meets your needs. To help us improve the documentation, send any errors, suggestions, or comments to Documentation Feedback (mailto:[email protected]). Include the document title and part number, version number, or the URL when submitting your feedback. Documentation feedback 29