Re: Booting P670 off Clariion with FC 6239

From: GertK (mail_at_invalid.null)
Date: 10/04/04

  • Next message: Douglas R. Probst: "Re: Booting P670 off Clariion with FC 6239" 
    Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:39:48 +0200

    > Worked with Power Path years ago before boot from fiber was supported. We
    > don't boot from fiber at our shop, but I did try it just for fun.
    > I will give you the method for IBMs SDD.
    > Booting from a sudo device vpath or powerpath device is NOT supported.
    Rootvg under powerpath control is supported by EMC and IBM.
    See eg the EMC whitepaper "EMC Clariion and IBM AIX Fibre Boot"
    The bootlist will still contain the various hdisk devices instead of
    hpowerdisk devices though, but these hdisk devices correspond to the
    alternative paths to the boot disk.

    With SDD, there is a command you can run to prevent a vpath from being
    > created, leaving just hdisks. I don't remember if EMC has such a thing but I
    > seem to remeber and exclude file.
    > Zone 2 disk to the server, one on one path, the other on the other path.
    > Now load your OS on one of the disk with alt_disk_install or if you want to
    > do a NIM install, take the LPAR down and follow the normal process and
    > choose your 2 fiber atached disk for the install.
    > The firmware will see them if they are supported for boot, I believe EMC as
    > sell as Shark are supported.
    > Note: you need to mirror your rootvg between the 2 fiber disks, so make sure
    > they are on different paths with different switches.
    > When you yank a cable, the box will stay up but you will get a million
    > errors and will have to reboot to get the path back and resync the mirror.
    > This is not unexpected, if you pulled a scsi cable the same thing would
    > happen. Personaly, I feel you can't beat scsi attached disk for
    > Availabilty... but that really doesn't mater any more does it....
    > Doug
    >
    >
    Thanks for sharing your SDD experiences.
    The powerpath method did work eventually, but the install procedure is
    still very tricky (EMC and IBM should improve on this). During install
    only one single path should exist to the san disk. This means, one FC
    HBA connected to a switch and also one cable between the switch and the
    storage server. Now the san lun will show up as hdisk0. After installing
    aix and powerpath, the second path can be added and rootvg can be
    configured under powerpath control. Advantages are plenty. No reboot
    required after path failure, no mirroring of rootvg required (rootvg is
    on a high available LUN already) and proper load balancing over multiple
    paths

    Gert

  • Next message: Douglas R. Probst: "Re: Booting P670 off Clariion with FC 6239"

    Relevant Pages

    • Re: 43P-150 hangs during startup, code 517
      ... I obviously have a system problem, where I can only boot from ... I'll just have to drop by IBM with it anyhow. ... and start with empty disks. ... it obviously makes no difference what sort of disk is mounted. ...
      (comp.unix.aix)
    • Re: Pb with alt_disk_copy
      ... I try to migrate AIX 5.3 from a local to a SAN disk ... EMC volume if you are running version 5.3, technology level 5, service ... as a boot volume is a standard volume. ...
      (comp.unix.aix)
    • Re: 43P-150 hangs during startup, code 517
      ... I now tried to low-level format both the Seagate 8GB and the IBM 36GB disks, ... I assume that this may be that none of them are recognized as a boot disk? ... If I reformat the 9GB system disk, what may I expect to happen? ...
      (comp.unix.aix)
    • Re: direct attach PC to Hitachi, EMC or IBM.
      ... I enjoy to develop MFNetDisk. ... I don't see that there is actually a need fro MFNETDISK, as the HDS ... [IBM-MAIN] direct attach PC to Hitachi, EMC or IBM. ...
      (bit.listserv.ibm-main)
    • Re: Win2k3 R2 - Storage Reporting on File Svr Cluster (SCSI-Attach
      ... The 7.12 driver set from the link you gave me is actually the ones I used. ... I questioned the IBM hardware support staff I contacted on this ... Cluster Manager, I have an IPSHA Disk D: resource which is attached to the ...
      (microsoft.public.windows.server.clustering)