Setup Powervault MD3200i from scratch and restore data thats on the disks

This example shows a setup of a previously configured MD3200i Powervault (with 2 extension modules) in order to restore data thats on the physical disks

Using Centos 7 server as a management server (this is where we will install iscsi command tool, plus Dell Powervault software to configure the disk layout) and also to mount the Powervault logical volumes as actual OS disks

Part A - Powervault physical configuration

• 1. Make sure your Powervault devices (MD3200i and any extension MD12xx are powered off)

  2. configure SAN controller + 2 extensions using SAN cables, in this example the SAN controllers are on the bottom box, the 2 extension modules are the 2 boxes on top of the controller,

  3. connect the SAN cables in following order,

• 1. connect the 2 ethernet cables for Management ports (see image below, in red) to your switch (these will get their IPs via DHCP, or assign them static IPs based on your local network)

  2. connect 2 ethernet cables to iSCSI ports (in yellow), port 0 on both controllers

  3. in this example, all ethernet connections are going directly to my network switch (using Cisco Meraki switch, which will assign IPs to these ports via DHCP)

• 1. Power on the devices in THE FOLLOWING ORDER (doing this incorrectly can wipe out your data!!!)

  2. 1 - power on the top-most MD12xxx extension module (wait 5 minutes for it to fully come up)

  3. 2 - power on the middle MD12xxx extension module (wait 5 min for it to come up)

  4. 3 - power on the MD3200i controller the last, wait 5 min to come up

  5. if no errors you will see green lights on all Powervault units blinking together in sync

• • 1. connect the serial cable to the Powrevault config port,

• • 1. connect the female DB9 connector to your server (in my case, this didnt work so I had to use a Gigabit Serial-to-USB connector, and connected the USB to my Centos7 server)

• • 1. once USB is connected, see what tty port the USB is connected to by running

• • 1. set the Serial device to your USB tty, Bps should be 115200 8N1, hit F and G to set the Hardware and Software control to "No"

• • 1. hit "X", Enter, select "Save setup as dfl" to save this config

    2. select "Exit", this will now place you into a console terminal

    3. Click "Control + a" and type f (lowercase F), this will initiate connection to MD3200i, once connected, it will display,

• • 1. Hit Enter, type S (capital S) hit enter

• • 1. password: supportDell

    2. Now change the IP,

• • 1. in this example, this controller IP was set with 192.168.30.182 (via DHCP)

    2. To exit minicom, Control + a, x

• 1. Part C - Dell Disk Storage Manager

     1. install Disk Storage manager on Centos 7 host (download ISO from https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=JPKXM&fileId=3365491915&osCode=WS8R2&productCode=powervault-md3220i&languageCode=EN&categoryId=CD)

     2. extract contents of ISO on the Centos server, and run the install

• • 1. once it discovers an array, click Manage Array, should see array details,

• • 1. click on Setup tab to configure the IPs for Management and ISCSI ports,

• • 1. RAID controller module 0 port 0 will already be set with our 192.168.30.182 IP (based on previous steps), now configure the IP for Module 1 port 0

• • 1. setting Module 1 port 0 to be DHCP IP (my switch gave this port IP of 192.168.30.72)

• • 1. Now configure the ISCSI ports (we are using only 2 ISCSI ethernet connections (see photo at start of this article), although you can also use just 1 cable if you just want to restore the data, not use this for production)

• • 1. configure the IPs for the ISCSI ports (here Im using DHCP IP of 192.168.30.55)

• • 1. my 2 ISCSI ports are now 192.168.30.55 and 192.168.30.235

    2. add the new host name of the management server (initiator device) to access all the disk arrays (in this example, qbtch3 is the Centos 7 management server)