Your situation helps me understand the internals of DMP that much more.
Sorry my benefit comes at your disadvantage. Good luck with the mystery.

BTW, a tip-of-the-hat to you for using the word "ontoward". Nice to read a
tech person using our language so well.

On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 6:26 AM, <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi All,
>         Thanks for all the information and suggestions it's given me a lot
> to
> look at. Hopefully I've covered all your questions below...
>
> > I've checked and there's no evidence I can find that anyone has made any
> changes against the arrays, either via the command line or vea - the latter
> which we don't use. However, looking at the tuneable values and what
> they're set to and what the defaults are there are two that are different
> to the defaults...
>
>       fuj411:/root# vxdmpadm gettune all
>                   Tunable               Current Value  Default Value
>       -------------------------------    -------------  -------------
>       dmp_failed_io_threshold               57600            57600
>       dmp_retry_count                           5                5
>       dmp_pathswitch_blks_shift                11               11
>       dmp_queue_depth                          32               32
>       dmp_cache_open                          off              off
>       dmp_daemon_count                         10               10
>       dmp_scsi_timeout                         30               30
>       dmp_delayq_interval                      15               15
>       dmp_path_age                              0              300
>       dmp_stat_interval                         1                1
>       dmp_health_time                           0               60
>       dmp_probe_idle_lun                       on               on
>       dmp_log_level                             1                1
>       dmp_retry_timeout                         0                0
>       fuj411:/root#
>
> I don't know who would've changed these or when, or at all. There's a lot
> of disk seen down each path - physical HBA. We have an A and a B side to
> the SAN with the disk being presented down both sides to separate HBA's on
> the server. The errors and other messages are always to the same array
> (IBM_SHARK1) which is the one that has the different value set, and is the
> one that see's the throttling against it.
>
> > The version of VxVM is 4.1 MP2 so I know we are downlevel and doesn't
> have the new default value of 512 that's come in with 5.1 MP3.
>
> > All paths are active and i/o is seen going down both paths to all disks.
> I can see this at the server and the SAN port level. The storage team have
> checked and the cannot find anything untoward. I've also had a look at the
> HBA's as well (fcinfo hba-port -l <HBA_WWN>)
>
> > The recovery option on both arrays is the same and set to the
> following...
>
>       fuj411:/root# vxdmpadm getattr enclosure IBM_SHARK0 recoveryoption
>       ENCLR-NAME      RECOVERY-OPTION      DEFAULT[VAL]        CURRENT[VAL]
>
> ==============================================================================
>       IBM_SHARK0      Throttle             Timebound[10]       Timebound
>       [10]
>       IBM_SHARK0      Error-Retry          Fixed-Retry[5]      Fixed-Retry
>       [5]
>       fuj411:/root#
>       fuj411:/root# vxdmpadm getattr enclosure IBM_SHARK1 recoveryoption
>       ENCLR-NAME      RECOVERY-OPTION      DEFAULT[VAL]        CURRENT[VAL]
>
> ==============================================================================
>       IBM_SHARK1      Throttle             Timebound[10]       Timebound
>       [10]
>       IBM_SHARK1      Error-Retry          Fixed-Retry[5]      Fixed-Retry
>       [5]
>       fuj411:/root#
>
> My suspicion is that we have some kind of fault it's just identifying
> where. I suspect this will involve getting the server up to the latest
> patch levels in the o/s and within the version installed for starters and
> getting the storage team to carry out a full end to end test of the
> hardware. In the meantime thanks again for all your help with this, very
> much appreciated. I think I will take Dmitry's advice and log a call with
> Symantec and see if they can explain the difference and whether it's just
> the way this array type operates.
>
> Thanks again.
>
> Cheers
> Phil.
>
>
>
>
>              Dmitry Glushenok
>              <[email protected]
>              >                                                          To
>                                        William Havey <[email protected]>
>              26/07/2012 21:09          [email protected]
>                                                                         cc
>                                        [email protected]
>                                                                    Subject
>                                        Re: [Veritas-vx] Question over DMP
>                                        partitionsize
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Hello William, Phil,
>
> 26.07.2012, в 21:25, William Havey написал(а):
>
>       Phil,
>
>       I don't believe any DMP values are changed by vxconfigd
>       automatically.
>
>       To be certain the partitionsize has not been manually changed,
>       Is VxVM command line logging enabled? run vxcmdlog -l to find out
>       If yes, look in /var/adm/vx/cmdlog for any vxdmpadm setattr commands.
>
> Phil using VCS, so cmdlog gets rewritten very fast.
> If /etc/vx/dmppolicy.info contains nothing about partition size and other
> VCS nodes have same partition size differences - it looks like ASL for
> SHARK (or vxdmp itself) is making the changes. And only way to verify this
> is contact symantec :)
>
>       Do you use vea? If so, its commands are logged in
>       /var/adm/vx/veacmdlog. But, I don't believe these values can beset in
>       vea.
>
>       I believe the "throttle" and "unthrottle" in the dmpevents log file
>       means holding back I/O from being addressed and sent out to storage
>       but I certainly can't say the two (partitionsize of 512 and log
>       entries for the SHARK1 with that size) are related or not.
>
> Path can be throttled if it holds SCSI command for more than specified
> amount of time or if queue depth for the path reaches specified limit. It
> can be checked with "vxdmpadm getattr enclosure <enc_name> recoveryoption"
> and verified with iostat: asvc_t and actv/wait columns (not sure which
> queue vxdmp counts, active or wait).
>
>
>       Are all paths being used for I/O just about the same?
>       vxdmpadm iostat start
>       vxdmpadm iostat reset
>       vxdmpadm iostat show enclosure=IBM_SHARK0 enclosure=IBM_SHARK1
>       interval=5
>       The first iteration of the utility shows cumulative statistics from
>       the time of mounting the file systems. So, ignore the first output.
>       If totals are about equal, then the value the partitionsize value may
>       be irrelevant. Perhaps I/O is truly random so that no I/O address is
>       within 512 sectors of the previous I/O. Even in a random environment
>       sometimes numerous successive I/O's can be within 512 sectors of each
>       other so that throttling those I/Os kicks-in.
>
>       IHTH,
>
>       Bill
>
>
>       On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 11:56 AM, <[email protected]> wrote:
>         Hi William,
>                 Thanks for the reply. Not sure how to get this track cach
>         size?
>         What's confusing me most here is that the values are so different
>         between
>         the two arrays. They're identical models set-up up the same and
>         with the
>         same number of disks allocated to the servers - sorry, forgot to
>         mention
>         they're in an HA pair using VCS. The only difference is that
>         IBM_SHARK0 is
>         local to the server where the workload is currently running, and
>         IBM_SHARK1
>         is in another building about 1.5KM's away. It's this disparity that
>         is
>         confusing me and making me wonder whether an issue we are seeing is
>         being
>         caused by this, or if it's an indication of an issue, though I've
>         been
>         informed by our storage people that there's nothing wrong with
>         either
>         array.
>                 This is certainly not something we've changed so I don't
>         know if
>         VxVM/DMP is throttling things back because it's seeing an issue. I
>         have
>         seen messages in the /etc/vx/dmpevents.log file for disks in the
>         IBM_SHARK1
>         array reporting 'Throttled Path' and then 'Un-throttled Path' and
>         I'm
>         trying to work out if the two are linked.
>
>         Cheers
>         Phil.
>
>
>
>
>                      William Havey
>                      <[email protected]
>                      m>
>         To
>                                                [email protected]
>                      26/07/2012 15:48
>         cc
>
>
>         Subject
>                                                Re: [Veritas-vx] Question
>         over DMP
>                                                partitionsize
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>         Partitionsize is in play when the iopolicy is Balanced, which is
>         the
>         default policy. You have Balanced.
>
>         It is defined as "The partitionsize attribute: Each successive I/O
>         starting
>         within in this range (default is 2048 sectors) goes through the
>         same path
>         as the previous I/O"
>
>         The man page has "Takes the track cache into consideration when
>         balancing
>         I/O across paths"
>
>         What is the track cache size on each array? Seems that the
>         partitionsize
>         should be the same value as the track cache size.
>
>
>
>         On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 7:09 AM, <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>           Hi,
>                   I'm trying to understand why one array has a wildly
>         different
>           partitionsize value to the other...
>
>           fuj411:/root# vxdmpadm getattr arrayname IBM_SHARK partitionsize
>           ENCLR_NAME     DEFAULT        CURRENT
>           ============================================
>           IBM_SHARK0     2048           2048
>           IBM_SHARK1     256            512
>           fuj411:/root#
>
>           Both arrays are IBM ESS SHARK 2105's which are active/active and
>           operating
>           in a Balanced i/o policy...
>
>           fuj411:/root# vxdmpadm getattr arrayname IBM_SHARK iopolicy
>           ENCLR_NAME     DEFAULT        CURRENT
>           ============================================
>           IBM_SHARK0     Balanced       Balanced
>           IBM_SHARK1     Balanced       Balanced
>           fuj411:/root#
>
>           The server is a Fujitsu PW850 running Solaris 10 with VxVM v4.1
>         MP2. The
>           volume are mirrored between the two arrays.
>
>           I'm trying to get a better understanding of what this means and
>         why it
>           would be so different between the two arrays. Any help greatly
>           appreciated.
>
>           Cheers
>           Phil.
>
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> --
> Dmitry Glushenok
> Jet Infosystems
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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