IBM FastT900 Tuning Recommendations for Novell Clustering Services

Multiple IBM FastT900 zoning changes were performed by local FastT900 administrator
IBM FastT900 Tuning Recommendations for Novell Clustering Services
StorageManager 8.4 was unable to move LUN's to secondary controller and vice versa.
Eventlog contained multiple instances of 'Logical Drive Transfer completed'. This event notification was parsed into the log file every 30 seconds.
Scanning LUN's was taking a considerable amount of time.
Slow throughput to storage (NAS).
Changing performance ratio when writing or reading from storage.
Data transfer from or to storage is interrupted for a few seconds.
Bad performance with NetWare Clustering 1.7
Client - server communication interrupted for several seconds

Firmware upgrade 6.10.11.00 was applied to FastT900
Zoning rules for a mixed environment:

1) configure the FastT so that there is only 1 physical path pointing to 1 controller

2) every Zone can contain only 1 Controller (single exception: host with single HBA)

3) validation rule for every Zone: every host port can see only his storage, so in any Zone there should be 1 host port configured

If the above rules are not adhered, NAS (Network Attached Storage) will behave unpredictable.

Using a NAS for multiple servers without clustering is NOT recommended without either LUN masking or port zoning. This is due to the possibility of data loss from either a new server install while attached to the SAN or from mounting a single volume on more than one server at the same time.

Firmware was outdated.
Zoning was configured incorrectly, causing the NAS to juggle continuously the LUN's (Logical Drives) from 1 controller to the other.
For NWCS 1.01 SP2 and later, you may perform all volume operations from any node but still needs to be done from the node in which the Volume is active and Clustering Services software is loaded and running on each node. NWCONFIG.NLM, NSS and Clustering are now more tightly integrated and should give an error message if trying to perform volume operations from a node other than the node the volume is active.
You should not install NetWare on a server that is attached to a NAS. The NetWare install will delete all NW partitions that it finds. If it is attached to shared storage, it will delete those as well. You must disconnect servers from their FC cables before installing NetWare. Again, this is true of virtually any OS install--NT's install will behave exactly the same way.

Formerly known as TID# 10096710