dmx 1000 symcli question

[rondebbs]

Hello,

I'm familiar with Clariion but new to dmx. I have a dmx1000 that has 460 5.5gb devices that are zoned to an AIX box. Only about 200 of the devices are being used in AIX volume groups. The other 160 are presented to the host as hdiskpower devices but are not currently part of an AIX volume group.

I need to create some larger devices (50 gb or more). Is there a way to unbind some of the 160 unused devices and then create new 50gb devices from the freed up disk space. I have not used symcli/symconfigure yet so I am looking for an example of what the commands might look like.

 

[lucky3rddson]

Hello RonDebbs,

The process has a few steps
Insure the PATH to the symcli is set. This will tell you where it is.
# find / -name symcli -type file -print 2>/dev/null
symcfg list
above will list serial # , if you have more than one symmetrix use the -sid option in your command, to prevent sorting through lots of output.

use this to determine what is currently masked
symmaskdb -sid 0123 list -wwn 10000000C93725b4 devs
the 2 variables are the -sid which is the last 3 or 4 digits of the symmetrix serial # and the wwn .

To obtain the wwn with AIX this might work.
#!/bin/ksh
# to grab the hba wwns out of a aix node

for fc in `lsdev -C | grep ^fcs | awk '{print$ 1}'`
{
wwn=`lscfg -vl $fc | grep 'Network Address' | cut -c 37-`
echo "$fc\t$wwn"
}

So now that you have the output from
symmaskdb -sid 0123 list -wwn 10000000C93725b4 devs
compaire it to what is mounted or in your volume groups.
The output of a inq command might be helpful, or not.

In a change window. Unmask the devices you want to free up
symmask -sid 0123 -wwn 10000000C93725b4 remove devs 111,112

in the above command you can list as many characters as your OS will allow on one command line.

To promptly put the devices back
symmask -sid 0123 -wwn 10000000C93725b4 add devs 111,112


symmask -sid 0123 refresh -noprompt
symcfg discover

I suggest using the unmask command first becuase if you inadverently pull the device out of a voulme group, and need to put it back in it can be done so quickly.

After the devices are unmasked, and you can still use the production file systems, proceed to the not_ready or write_protect phase.


Devices must be write disabled prior to unmapping
from the commad line this will do that

symdev -sid 0123 write_disable XXX -sa ALL -p 1 -noprompt
symdev -sid 0123 write_disable XXX -sa ALL -p 0 -noprompt

I usually do a symdev show on the device and get specific, on the sa I am pulling it from.

After the device is write_disabled it can be unmaped with

unmap dev xxx from dir all:all;

which is usually put in a text file and run through symconfigure. Something like

symconfigure -sid 0123 -f unamp_devs preview -noprompt
symconfigure -sid 0123 -f unmap_devs prepair -noprompt
symconfigure -sid 0123 -f unmap_devs commit -noprompt

After all of that the devices will be free and be able to be redeployed on another System.

Pulling disk can cause applications to crash. Be careful !
If the devices are just going to be used on the same system but in a different volume group, all of the above in unnecessary just use LVM to manage the volume groups.

Good Luck,

 

[rondebbs]

Excellent info. I will look at this closer when I am in the office tommorrow. I dialed in and ran the symmaskdb command below.

"root@wfscr04:/opt/emc/SYMCLI/V6.0.0/bin#./symmaskdb -sid 1303 list -wwn 10000000C93F35D6 devs

The Symmetrix device masking database has not been initialized

root@wfscr04:/opt/emc/SYMCLI/V6.0.0/bin#"

As you can see we have not implenetned masking. From what I understand EMC gave a huge quote to purchase LUN masking so my company skipped it. Instead each of the few hosts on the DMX are zoned to a specific FA port.

I have two aix 5.2 hosts that are each connected to differen dmx100s. For some reason one of the hosts gives good output fro the symcfg list command but the second host gives the following -
"root@wfscr05:/opt/emc/SYMCLI/V6.0.0/bin#./symcfg list
No devices were found"

I'm not sure why it say no devices found. If I look with ECC I can see the devices. Any ideas?

 

[jjjon]

Run a 'symcfg discover' to populate the symapi db on the host, then you should see the devices.

Looks like your FAs dont have the VCM enable so just write_disable and unmap as Rondebbs says above to remove the devices (then run cfgmgr). To check the VCM, run the following: 'symcfg -sid xxx list -v -dir XX -p n | grep -i VCM_State'

Once unmapped you can create metas from the devices using a symconfigure script:

---------
form meta from dev XXX, config=striped, stripe_size=NNNN;
add dev YYY to meta XXX, protect_data=false;
add dev ZZZ to meta XXX, protect_data=false;
....
...
.
---------

'protect_data' assumes you have nothing on these devices you want to keep, and I'm assuming they'll be striped.

You should refer to the EMC Configuration Change CLI Guide on Powerlink - it's an invaluable doc for this sort of thing. Of course you can do all this through ECC, which might be a bit easier if you're not used to SYMCLI.

J