Re: Need experiences regarding booting from SAN

From: Wheelock, Michael D (Michael.Wheelock_at_INTEGRIS-HEALTH.COM)
Date: 02/27/04

  • Next message: Bill Verzal: "Re: "exportvg -p -m" for AIX" 
    Date:         Fri, 27 Feb 2004 12:53:42 -0600
To: aix-l@Princeton.EDU

    Hi,

    I have a 7026-M80 that I am using SAN boot disks on. It has a pair of
    6228 fibre cards. The storage is a FastT700. IBM Brocade rebranded
    switches.

    Initial install was seamless (started with 5.2, so no issues seeing the
    fibre channel devices).

    For me the big win was not having to crack the case to get to a failed
    internal drive (the M80 has its internal disks inside its first I/O
    drawer).

    I have booted several other unixes off of the SAN (Tru-64 unix almost
    forces you into it if the system is a cluster as each memebers boot disk
    must be on shared storage).

    We use Tivoli Storage Manager for System Backup and Recover (the old
    sysback tool) for our mksysb's and been able to successfully rebuild at
    a DR site (to the point where I would need all of my tapes from
    production anyway).

    I have updated from base to ML1 and then ML2 with no issues.

    Another nice advantage is that for disk redundancy, I don't have to use
    LVM copies. This greatly simplifies disk replacement (as it is all
    behind the raid controller, so AIX only sees the single hdisk).

    My $0.02

    Michael Wheelock
    Integris Health of Oklahoma

    -----Original Message-----
    From: IBM AIX Discussion List [mailto:aix-l@Princeton.EDU] On Behalf Of
    pSeries AIX Geek
    Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 10:47 AM
    To: aix-l@Princeton.EDU
    Subject: Need experiences regarding booting from SAN

    Proposed environment is a mix of p670s and p630s. IBM business partner
    is pushing booting from SAN (Shark).
    Customer (and I) favor booting from internal disks, because of our
    mutual feeling that this is more RELIABLE (while more inflexible).

    Questions:

    1. If you're booting from SAN (or did in the past), what
    problems/advantages did you encounter?
    2. What SAN solution, pSeries solution, and fiber HBA combination were
    you using?
    3. Does a particular SAN solution (EMC, Shark,
    Hitachi) make it easier/harder to implement SAN booting?
    4. Any issues with migrations/updates/mksysb restores?
    5. Other commentary.

    I still prefer booting from internal disks (and including SAN disks as
    non-boot rootvg disks if I must), but I realize that there must be some
    real advantages....

    - pAG

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  • Next message: Bill Verzal: "Re: "exportvg -p -m" for AIX"

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