Hitachi Ops Center​

Objective

Ops Center v10.8.0 supports data-in-place upgrades of storage systems moving from VSP 5500 to VSP 5600. This blog highlights how easily Ops Center adapts to the upgrade. The upgrade was tested in the lab and the impact on Ops Center products was tracked.

Introduction

Data-in-place (DIP) upgrades provide the following benefits:

• You can upgrade current-generation controllers to the next generation controllers without data migration.
• You do not need new drives because the next-generation controllers continue to use the current controller drives.

These changes are transparent to Ops Center, so the Ops Center products adapt to the upgrade seamlessly, which was tested and validated in a lab environment. Protector was out of scope of this testing.

This blog covers the following Ops Center products:

• Administrator                           (v8.0.22402)
• Analyzer                                   (v8.0-01)
• Automator                                (v10.8.0)
• API configuration Manager  (CMREST v10.8.0)

Pre-upgrade and post-upgrade validation were done for each of these products.

Test Methodology

• The Ops Center OVA (Open Virtualization Appliance) v10.8.0 was deployed on the first Virtual Machine (VM) server. Analyzer v10.8.0-01 was installed separately on another VM server. A third VM server was used to deploy the Ops Center Probe OVA v10.8.0-01.
• Originally, the VSP 5500 was discovered in all Ops Center Products. Sanity checks were run and documented.
• Then, the controllers were upgraded, and the array was moved to a VSP 5600. At this point, the storage system was rediscovered in each Ops Center product. Sanity checks were run for data integrity and documented for each Ops Center product.

Environment Configuration

A high-level representation of the test environment is shown in the following figure:

Figure1 – High Level Environment Representation (post-upgrade)

Ops Center with a Data-in-place Upgrade

Each Ops Center product was validated pre-upgrade and post-upgrade as follows:

Administrator

Pre-upgrade: The storage system was initially discovered in Administrator with the Model listed as VSP 5500 as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 2 – Administrator Pre-upgrade

Post-upgrade: Post data-in-place upgrade (after the move from VSP 5500 to VSP 5600), the Administrator UI was refreshed, and as shown in the following screenshot, the new storage system model (VSP 5600) is listed:

Figure 3 – Administrator Post-upgrade

Analyzer

Pre-upgrade: Initially, the storage system was discovered as a VSP 5500 in Analyzer and Analyzer detail view. The following screen shots show the Analyzer and detail view UIs:

Figure 4 – Analyzer Pre-upgrade

Figure 5 – Detail View Pre-upgrade

Post-upgrade: Post-upgrade, the Analyzer and detail view UIs were refreshed. Analyzer reflected the new storage model (VSP 5600) after the refresh as shown in the following Analyzer and detail view screenshots:

Figure 6 – Analyzer Post-upgrade

Figure 7 – Detail View Post-upgrade

Automator

Pre-upgrade: Initially, the VSP 5500 storage system was discovered in Automator (through CMREST) as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 8 – Automator Pre-upgrade

Post-upgrade: Post-upgrade, the storage system was reregistered into CMREST through the Automator UI. After a storage refresh, the new storage model (VSP 5600) was automatically updated in the UI as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 9 – Automator Post-upgrade

API Configuration Manager (CM-REST)

Pre-upgrade: ‘GET URL’ in CM-REST was used to capture storage information when the storage system was VSP 5500 as follows:

Figure 10 – CMREST Pre-upgrade

The storage system was then deregistered.

Post Upgrade: Post-upgrade, the storage system was reregistered in CM-REST and the new model was obtained by using ‘GET URL’. The new storage model (VSP 5600) was returned as follows:

Figure 11 – CMREST Post-upgrade

Test Conclusion

Based on the post data-in-place upgrade test results, the following observations were made:

• Administrator reflects the new storage system model (VSP 5600) after the storage system is refreshed in the UI.
• Both Analyzer and detail view show the new storage system model (VSP 5600) after refreshing the UI.
• In CM-REST, the storage system was reregistered and the new model (VSP 5600) was obtained through the ‘GET’ URL.
• For Automator, the storage system was reregistered in CMREST, and after refreshing the UI, the new storage system model (VSP 5600) was shown.

Best practices used in Lab

The best practices followed during testing are as follows:

• It was essential to recheck the SVP services and restart them if needed. Ops Center products that depend on the SVP (like Administrator) may not reflect the upgraded model if SVP services are not restarted post-upgrade.
• The Ops Center v10.8.0 OVA includes Analyzer v10.7.0, which does not support the data-in-place upgrade. Therefore, a separate environment was needed to install and configure Analyzer v10.8.0-01.
• The Raid Agent Instance (Probe) corresponding to the VSP 5500 storage system was restarted post-upgrade. After the restart, the new VSP 5600 model was reflected in the Raid Agent.

Summary

Ops Center products are seamless and transparent to data-in-place upgrades (VSP 5500 to VSP 5600). The upgraded storage system model  reflected in Ops Center with minimum intervention. This has been tested successfully in the Lab and documented in this blog for general reference.