Why is the status of hosts shown as Degraded in the 'lshost' command output in storwize V7000 Storage Node for data nodes in PureData for Operational Analytics appliance?

Answer

The storage nodes in V7000 can be accessed using following ways:

1. Through V7000 Graphical User Interface where the status of the data nodes can be seen as Degraded as shown.

2. When lshost command is run on the storage node or in snap output from V7000 Storage Node, the same status Degraded can seen for all the data nodes in the cluster.

First V7000
IBM_2076:v7000_4:superuser>lshost
id name     port_count iogrp_count status
0  toucan06 8          4           degraded
1  toucan05 8          4           degraded

IBM_2076:v7000_4:superuser>lshost 0
id 0
name toucan06
port_count 8
type generic
mask 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001111
iogrp_count 4
status degraded
WWPN 21000024FF6D4CFD
node_logged_in_count 0
state offline
WWPN 21000024FF6D4CFE
node_logged_in_count 2
state active
WWPN 21000024FF6D4C97
node_logged_in_count 2
state active
WWPN 21000024FF6D4C94
node_logged_in_count 0
state offline
WWPN 21000024FF6D4CFF
node_logged_in_count 2
state active
WWPN 21000024FF6D4C96
node_logged_in_count 2
state active
WWPN 21000024FF6D4CFC
node_logged_in_count 0
state offline
WWPN 21000024FF6D4C95
node_logged_in_count 0
state offline

Second V7000
IBM_2076:v7000_8:superuser>lshost
id name     port_count iogrp_count status
0  toucan06 8          4           degraded
1  toucan05 8          4           degraded
IBM_2076:v7000_8:superuser>lshost 0
id 0
name toucan06
port_count 8
type generic
mask 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001111
iogrp_count 4
status degraded
WWPN 21000024FF6D4CFD
node_logged_in_count 2
state active
WWPN 21000024FF6D4CFE
node_logged_in_count 0
state offline
WWPN 21000024FF6D4C97
node_logged_in_count 0
state offline
WWPN 21000024FF6D4C94
node_logged_in_count 2
state active
WWPN 21000024FF6D4CFF
node_logged_in_count 0
state offline
WWPN 21000024FF6D4C96
node_logged_in_count 0
state offline
WWPN 21000024FF6D4CFC
node_logged_in_count 2
state active
WWPN 21000024FF6D4C95
node_logged_in_count 2
state active 

This is because of the design and how the V7000 Storage Nodes are connected to the data nodes using the San Switches. Each data node has 2 Quad Port HBA, so 8 World Wide Port Name(WWPN) ports in total.

Each data nodes must be connected to the two V7000 Storage nodes to reduce the number of paths per LUN to 8 for best practices

The V7000 Storage Node has 8 FC ports which are in defined state because to each port you can see one of the two host's WWPN connected but half of them are always off-line. This causes the status of the Node Status from the V7000 perspective as Degraded for the data nodes. This should not be considered as a functional problem as this is due to the zoning of each HBA to two V7000 storage nodes.