EMC PowerPath Powermt Command Examples
EMC PowerPath Powermt Command Examples
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If your server has two HBA cards connected to EMC SAN storage device, you can implement load-balancing,
and fail-over on the HBA cards using the EMC PowerPath software.
Powermt management utility helps you manage I/O paths from the server to the EMC storage device. In this
article, let us discuss how to use powermt command with practical examples.
powermt display command (without any arguments), displays the available HBAs and their current status. The
following examples, shows that there are 2 HBAs connected to the server, both the HBAs are in active condition
with 2 I/O path’s each. qla2xxx indicates that it is using the Q-Logic HBA card.
This also indicates that the connected EMC device is CLARiiON, as it displays a value for “CLARiiON logical
device count” as 1.
# powermt display
Symmetrix logical device count=0
CLARiiON logical device count=1
Hitachi logical device count=0
Invista logical device count=0
HP xp logical device count=0
Ess logical device count=0
HP HSx logical device count=0
==============================================================================
----- Host Bus Adapters --------- ------ I/O Paths ----- ------ Stats ------
### HW Path Summary Total Dead IO/Sec Q-IOs Errors
==============================================================================
1 qla2xxx optimal 2 0 - 0 0
2 qla2xxx optimal 2 0 - 0 0
This is the most frequently used powermt command, which will display all the attached logical devices to the
server.
# powermt display dev=all
Pseudo name=emcpowera
CLARiiON ID=AAA00000000000 [dev-server]
Logical device ID=1111111111111111111 [LUN 1]
state=alive; policy=CLAROpt; priority=0; queued-IOs=0
Owner: default=SP B, current=SP B Array failover mode: 1
==============================================================================
---------------- Host --------------- - Stor - -- I/O Path - -- Stats ---
### HW Path I/O Paths Interf. Mode State Q-IOs Errors
==============================================================================
1 qla2xxx sdd SP A4 active alive 0 0
1 qla2xxx sde SP B4 active alive 0 0
2 qla2xxx sdf SP A5 active alive 0 0
2 qla2xxx sdg SP B5 active alive 0 0
Pseudo name=emcpowerb
CLARiiON ID=AAA00000000000 [dev-server]
Logical device ID=2111111111111111111 [LUN 2]
state=alive; policy=CLAROpt; priority=0; queued-IOs=0
Owner: default=SP A, current=SP A Array failover mode: 1
==============================================================================
---------------- Host --------------- - Stor - -- I/O Path - -- Stats ---
### HW Path I/O Paths Interf. Mode State Q-IOs Errors
==============================================================================
1 qla2xxx sdh SP A4 active alive 0 0
1 qla2xxx sdi SP B4 active alive 0 0
2 qla2xxx sdj SP A5 active alive 0 0
2 qla2xxx sdk SP B5 active alive 0 0
The above indicates that there are two LUNs attached to the dev-server with 4 I/O paths from the server to the
SAN storage device.
Pseudo name=emcpowera – The device name that can be used by the server. For example,
/dev/emcpowera.
CLARiiON ID=AAA00000000000 [dev-server] - EMC CLARiiON CX3 serial number and the server
name.
Logical device ID=11111111 [LUN 1] – LUN number. For example, LUN 1.
state=alive; policy=CLAROpt; – This displays that this particular LUN is valid and using the CLAROpt
policy.
Owner: default=SP B, current=SP B – This indicates that the default (and current) owner for this LUN
is storage processor SP B.
When there are multiple LUNs connected to a server, you might want to view information about a specific LUN
by providing the logical name of the LUN as shown below.
If the device is not available, you’ll get a “Bad dev value” as shown below.
# powermt display dev=emcpowerc
Bad dev value emcpowerc, or not under Powerpath control.
This is similar to #1, but displays whether hba is enabled or not, as shown in the last column of the output.
# powermt display hba_mode
Symmetrix logical device count=0
CLARiiON logical device count=1
Hitachi logical device count=0
Invista logical device count=0
HP xp logical device count=0
Ess logical device count=0
HP HSx logical device count=0
==============================================================================
----- Host Bus Adapters --------- ------ I/O Paths ----- Stats
### HW Path Summary Total Dead Q-IOs Mode
==============================================================================
1 qla2xxx optimal 2 0 0 Enabled
2 qla2xxx optimal 2 0 0 Enabled
Displays the status of the individual ports on the HBA. i.e Whether the port is enabled or not.
# powermt display port_mode
Storage class = Symmetrix
==============================================================================
----------- Storage System --------------- -- I/O Paths -- --- Stats ---
ID Interface Wt_Q Total Dead Q-IOs Mode
==============================================================================
Storage class = CLARiiON
==============================================================================
----------- Storage System --------------- -- I/O Paths -- --- Stats ---
ID Interface Wt_Q Total Dead Q-IOs Mode
==============================================================================
AAA00000000000 SP A4 256 1 0 0 Enabled
AAA00000000000 SP B4 256 1 0 0 Enabled
AAA00000000000 SP A5 256 1 0 0 Enabled
AAA00000000000 SP B5 256 1 0 0 Enabled
If you have made changes to the HBA’s, or I/O paths, just execute powermt check, to take appropriate action.
For example, if you have manually removed an I/O path, check command will detect a dead path and remove it
from the EMC path list.
# powermt check
Warning: storage_system I/O path path_name is dead.
Do you want to remove it (y/n/a/q)?
Note: If you want powermt to automatically remove all dead paths, without any confirmation, execute “powermt
check force”.
11. powermt set mode hba – Forcefully set the mode for a specific HBA
You can change the mode of a specific HBA to either standby or active using this command. Following example,
changes HBA #1′s mode from active to standby.
# powermt set mode=standby hba=1
After the above command, you can see the mode for HBA#1 changed to standby, as shown below.
# powermt display dev=all
Pseudo name=emcpowera
CLARiiON ID=AAA00000000000 [dev-server]
Logical device ID=1111111111111111111 [LUN 1]
state=alive; policy=CLAROpt; priority=0; queued-IOs=0
Owner: default=SP B, current=SP B Array failover mode: 1
==============================================================================
---------------- Host --------------- - Stor - -- I/O Path - -- Stats ---
### HW Path I/O Paths Interf. Mode State Q-IOs Errors
==============================================================================
1 qla2xxx sdd SP A4 standby alive 0 0
1 qla2xxx sde SP B4 standby alive 0 0
2 qla2xxx sdf SP A5 active alive 0 0
2 qla2xxx sdg SP B5 active alive 0 0
Note: Path mode can also be “unlic” indicating that you’ve not registered the PowerPath with proper License
key.
Note: Some powermt commands (for example, powermt set port_disable), is restricted to certain platform and
storage type — On AIX and Solaris, only Fibre channel is supported. On HP-UX, only iSCSI and Fibre are
supported. On Linux, Only iSCSI (HBAs) and Fibre are supported.
To remove I/O Path sdd, execute the following powermt remove command.
# powermt remove dev=sdd
Following will remove all I/O Path for a particular device. i.e To remove /dev/emcpowera, do the following. If
the /dev/emcpowera is mounted and used by some program, following command will not work.
# powermt remove dev=emcpowera
This command checks for available EMC SAN logical devices and add those to PowerPath configuration list.
Powermt config command, sets some of the options to it’s default values. For example, write throttling = off,
HBA mode = active, CLARiiON policy = CLAROpt, etc.
Possible EMC SAN LUN policy values are: Adaptive, BasicFailover, CLAROpt, LeastBlocks, LeastIos,
NoRedirect, Request, RoundRobin, StreamIO, or SymmOpt.
After you execute the powermt config, if you don’t like any of the default values, you should change it
accordingly.
# powermt config
If you have dead I/O paths, and if you’ve done something to fix the issue, you can request PowerPath to
re-check the paths and mark it as active using powermt restore command.
When you execute powermt restore, it does an I/O path check. If a previously dead path is alive, it will be
marked as alive, and if a previously alive path is dead, it will be marked as dead.
For some reason, if you see the default owner and the current owner of a particular LUN is not the same storage
processor, then execute the following command, which will make the current owner of the LUN same as the
default owner.
# powermt restore dev=all
Instead of dev, you can also specify class in the powermt restore command. Class can be one of the following
depending on your system.
symm – Symmetrix
clariion - CLARiiON
invista – Invista
ess – IBM ESS
hitachi – Hitachi Lightning TagmaStore
hpxp - HP StorageWorks XP, or EVA series
hphsx – HP StorageWorks EMA, or MA
all – All systems
15. Powermt Save and Load – Save and Restore PowerPath Configurations
If you are changing the PowerPath configurations for testing purpose, you can save the current configuration
using powermt save command.
This will save the current powermt configuration to /etc/powermt.custom file. Following is the partial content of
this file.
# cat /etc/powermt.custom
global:version:5.3.0.0.0:4.1.0
path_c:sdd:sdd:qla2xxx:0x111
path_c:sde:sde:qla2xxx:0x111
adapter: 1: 1:qla2xxx:0x111:1:0:111:0:11:0
adapter: 2: 2:qla2xxx:0x111:1:0:111:0:111:0
arrPort_c:04000000:04000000:111:111
mpext_cfg:unused:Mp:0:symm:0:0
...
...
If you want to store the current PowePath configuration to a different file, do the following.
# powermt save file=/etc/powermt.21-Aug-2010
When you are testing EMC PowerPath configuration, if you are not satisfied with the new configuration, you
can go back to the previous configuration.
For example, to restore the configuration to a specific file that you created in the above powermt save example,
do the following.
# powermt load file=/etc/powermt.21-Aug-2010
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Hello,
Where or how can I get a PDF version of the article?
Hi Ramesh,
How are you doing ? I had been following your articles some months before when i was only working on
Linux and left following your articles quite some time. But guess what now i am into storage and when i
searched for powerpath, i have been brought to your website again for Storage ???? Wow!!!! you are a
kind of man who holds all the information about the Technology no matters what it is……….
thanks
Thanks a lot
In past I had used Veritas DMP but never used EMCpowerpath before and your page makes me expert.!!!
Hi Ramesh,
Thanks For giving Such A great Things and Info Thank you very much and i want more commands which
are used in storage and TSM backup commands.. please send to my mail Id
Thanks for this, understand that the CLARiiON always come with the server name. I noticed that the
Symmetrix doesn’t have this features. Is there anyway we can have the servername printed on the same
level of powermt command?
Ramesh,
We were working on a migration needing to track the errors being shown using the powermt config
command. As we resolved the cabling issue, is there a way to reset the error counts that are shown from
the powermt config output?
Excellent.
Thanks…..
Sanjiv Shiraguppi
Awesome
Excellent,
I have question, how to clear the historic errors. for now, we are rebooting the node. Is there any command
to clear ?
HI!
“powermt restore” command will clear error counters!!.
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