topic Managing multiple controllers in Active IQ Unified Manager Discussions

Managing multiple controllers

ttrulis01 — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 07:16:28 GMT

How is everyone managing more than one controller? Logging into 3+ controllers is a bit inefficient. It is also confusing as it makes it appear that one controller "owns" a shelf when if clustered both controllers have access. For example, I log onto toaster1 and see a list of volumes. I then log onto toaster2 (second controller) and it has a different set of volumes. Both toasters are connected to the same shelves - shouldn't they see all volumes via Filerview?

Thanks,

Re: Managing multiple controllers

jayadratha — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:58:54 GMT

Hello!

In windows environment use system manager. You can dowload it free from now.

If you have more than 5 system maybe you choose Operations Manager (Solaris, Linux, Windows).

OM (formerly DFM) need additional license.

Re: Managing multiple controllers

radek_kubka — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:07:18 GMT

Hi,

Re clustered pair:

Each controller should be 'cabled up' to all disks, but this is for fail-over purposes only. At any given time each disk in your setup can be 'owned' by one controller only, hence separate disk pools, aggregates & volumes.

In other words, both controllers work independently & have to be managed independently.

Regards,

Radek

Re: Managing multiple controllers

RichardSopp — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 19:25:08 GMT

Point of note as on Operations Manager 3.8 and above its only available for Linux and Windows.

If you're primarily a Windows shop then system manager should suffice for managing a few systems.

You're question indicates that cabling implies ownership of disk. Cabling is there are part of the clustering configuration to take ownership of the partners disk in the event of a controller failure. The disks are assigned to a given controller such that during normal operations a controller only has access to the volumes on the disks it owns.

Re: Managing multiple controllers

amiller_1 — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 21:52:16 GMT

Absolutely spot on answer by Radek re. how the volumes show up. A bit on Systems Manager, FilerView and Operations Manager though....

FilerView is for your day to day management and can be annoying in that you have to login to FilerView on each system individually (even two systems in a cluster). System Manager is the long-term replacement for FilerView (i.e. does day to day tasks) and one of its benefits in being Windows MMC-based is that you can add all your systems into a single pane of glass. You still management them separately but it's all in the same window basically (and with a nicer UI + wizards in some cases). There are a few features not in System Manager yet (mainly SnapMirror and stuff around RAID groups) but it's quite good for a 1.1 release....free for download at NOW of course.

Operations Manager is not as much a day to day management tool as for long-term history/trending and alerting. It also has a component called Performance Advisor that helps with very in-depth performance troubleshooting (can see latencies, ops, individual volume, LUN, aggregate or even disk activity levels in real time). Operations Manager used to be a paid add-on but is now included in the Base Pack with all new purchases.