Hello everyone,
I've been working on this issue for a month now and have tickets open with Netapp and Microsoft. We have not been able to resolve the issue as of yet and since I'm losing all my hair I thought I should post it...
Scenario:
Two Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise SP Fail-Over Clusters (C1 & C2)
Two Netapp FAS6280 Filers for SAN storage
8 DELL R815 servers w/ 2x QLE2562 8GB FC HBAs all paths used (9.1.9.47 - newer did not resolve)
Netapp DSM 4.0 & SnapManager 6.4.2 (we also tried 1 rev newer, 1 rev older without luck)
C1 has 2 nodes & C2 has 4 nodes.
We are trying to add new nodes into the clusters. We were originally on EMC Clariion arrays and have been migrated to the netapp. Prior to moving we had 3 nodes in C2 and added node 4.
Now we want to add 2 more nodes, one to each cluster. We were able to configure the OS and get everything installed and matching the other nodes. we can assign HBAs to a test IGROUP and assign a lun, format it use it restart all is well and normal. As soon as we change the HBAs to the IGROUP for C1 or C2's LUNs the servers don't want to restart properly. They hang at a black screen. The little green windows start splash screen runs the bar at the bottom. it then is supposed to fade out and come back with the grey screen saying starting windows but that doesn't always happen. Sometimes it can take 4 hours to restart, or the machine will not come back onine at all. The pre-existing nodes *do not* experience this issue. They restart in 5-10 minutes without issue.
We know drivers are part of the issue, but the maddening part is that it all works fine until we try to add the HBAs to the existing cluster storage group. We have a suggestion to create separate IGROUPs for each cluster node and add all luns to the separate igroups. We configured this on one node and it still restarts long. We plan to modify the other nodes during our maintenance window and try again.
On the other cluster we were able to successfully complete the validate wizard and join. everything fails over and works except the server does not come up upon restart. If I unplug the HBAs it will come up fine, then I can plug them in and the cluster functions.
Does anyone have any other ideas for us to try? Currently support for both netapp and Microsoft appear stumped. Sunday is our Window and we plan to try reconfiguring but I'm losing optimism...
Thanks for any feedback/ideas!
-Ryan