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Enhancements in Server Group Management in Administrator 10.9.0

By Prasenjit Chatterjee posted 12-27-2022 11:39

  

In Ops Center Administrator v10.9.0, a new enhancement for the Server Group Management feature has been added. This enhancement allows you to use the path of an existing cluster server node to map a newly added server node to the server group. Alternatively, ports can be introduced to a server group cluster when adding a new server node. In addition, the same enhanced server group workflow removes paths and volumes when removing a server node from the server group.

Simplified depiction: Adding a path for a new server


This blog consists of the following sections:

  • Enhancement advantages.
  • Adding a server in the Server Group and attaching volumes.
  • Removing a server from the Server Group and detaching volumes.

 

Enhancement Advantages

When you add or remove a server node into or from the server group, you must specify the path settings for the new server node to perform certain operations such as attaching a volume to the new server node. Using this enhanced server group feature, the path settings of the existing server nodes can be applied to newly added server nodes.

The key advantage of this feature is that it reduces effort and simplifies server group management for application clusters. Using this enhanced feature, the existing cluster server nodes path configuration can be automatically applied to a new server node when it is added to the server group, and path configurations can be removed when a server node is removed from the server group.

Adding a server node to a Server Group and attaching volumes

The following steps illustrate how to add a new server node to a server group. In addition, it shows how you can attach volumes to the new server node by using the Update Server Group Wizard to select volumes and paths from an existing server node member in the same server group.


 1. Navigate to the Server Group page and click the existing server group ID. In this scenario, we selected 1.



Only one server exists in the Server Group with ID 1.


2. Click Update Server Group.


3. Select the new server you want to add to this server group and click
Add.


Note: If the check box “Attach or detach all existing volumes when adding server to or removing servers from a server group” is not checked, then the server node will be added or removed into or from the server group; however, the existing path configuration is not updated for a new server node (same behaviour as the previous version). The default value is ‘checked’.

4. After the server node is added to the server group, click Next.


5. Select the volumes from an existing server in the server group that you want to attach to the new server node in the server and click Next.

In this example, we selected only one volume from the existing server/server IU_host_9070 which is attached to the new server IU_host_9068. However, in a real-life scenario, you could select All Volumes if needed.


6. Now, you must select the port settings from the following two options:

  • If you select Use Existing Ports, then you must select the existing server and the existing path configuration in the next step.
  • If you select Use New Ports, then you must select the new ports for path configuration in the next step.

In this scenario, we selected
Use Existing Ports.

When you select Use Existing Ports, a list of all existing servers is displayed from the server group and you can select any port, one at a time, to mimic the selected server node path configuration. In this scenario, because the server group has only one existing server, it is showing only one.


7. From the Adding Servers column, select the new server WWPN. From the Original Server column, select the existing ports. Click Add.


New server WWPN and existing server ports are added.


8. Select the Zone setting option and click Submit. In this scenario, we selected No. If you select No, then an auto-zone will be created by Administrator.

After the job has succeeded in the Administrator job queue, we can see that a new server node was added to the server group and the specified volume and path settings were also mapped.

A new server node in the Server Group appears as follows:


9. Click Server 2. You will see that the specified volume and path settings have also been updated to this new server.


Removing a server from the Server Group and detaching volumes

The following steps illustrate how to remove a server/server node from a server group. In addition, it shows how you can detach existing volumes from the same server node that is being removed using the same Update Server Group Wizard.

We have an existing server group named GPSE_update_server_group_test with three server nodes, along with their respective volume counts.


1. Navigate to the Server Group page and click
Update Server Group.


2. Select the server nodes you want to remove from the server group and then click
Remove. In this example, we used the server IU_host_9069 with seven attached volumes.



3. Click Submit. The following pop-up appears stating that when you remove the server, the volumes will be detached from the server. Click OK.


In the Administrator job dashboard, the target server IU_host_9069 was removed and all the attached volumes were detached.

The server node IU_host_9069 was removed from the server group.


All attached volumes from the server node IU_host_9069 were detached.


Conclusion

The new feature for the Server Group enhancement was successfully tested in the lab, and will be quite useful for end users as well as easy to implement in a customer environment.

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