I’m 1600 miles away implementing a multi node cluster of these HC380s and have run into a few bugs. One is an absolute deal breaker and needed to share this in hopes it helps others in the same process.
During implementation, you are asked to choose a username and password for the VirtualStore appliances that make up the storage back end of this solution. There are a few characters that are not accepted like colons, semicolons, etc.
One of the characters that they did not call out is the ampersand (&) – DO NOT use this character when deploying the HC380 environment. Your deployment will begin and then fail during the VSA deployment and configuration. The end result is a smoldering pile of HP software that requires a manual “reset” process on each and every node that will take about 45 minutes to run on each.
Pre-Implementation Tips:
- Verify you’re running the latest version – don’t assume the fresh hardware arriving has the latest version.
- Download all of the images available before arriving onsite… just in case you need them. The management VM is 20GB large and installed on each node, better to have that before you need it.
- Bring some longer Ethernet cable if you don’t want to be standing behind the HPC node balancing your laptop in one hand and deploying or resetting the environment with the other.
Don’t disregard implementation support costs. If you’re not ready to lean hard on your HP reps – purchase implementation support. HP production support may ask you to pay up for help implementing their solution even if the problem is 100% their software.