SAN Boot VIO and NPIV ?

[polani]

Guys

I did recently a fresh installation of VIO lpars using single path from SAN. VIO lpars are booting well from SAN now.

My question is that can i use same FC port which is being used currently for VIO lpars to boot , for booting AIX client lpars using NPIV? In other words can i create Virtual Server FC adapter on VIO level on same port which is already being used for VIO SAN boot process ?

Please clarify ,

Thanks in advance for help!!!

Here comes polani Once again!!!

 

[itsp1965]

Hi Polani we do this all the time. I can't tell you how it's done at a command level (I just design it) but this article can help

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-NPIV/index.html?ca=dat-

 

[cspilman]

yes, you can, although I'm wondering why you only have a single path to your VIO servers. How are you going to recover if you have issues with that path?

As far as the mapping from the VIO servers, you can use the same adapters that are being used for SAN boot with not issues. For example, if your path that's actively being used on the VIO server is on fcs0, you can do the following for your VIO clients:

vfcmap -vadapter vfchost# -fcp fcs0

vfchost# obviously would be the host adapter of whatever VIO client you had setup. This scenario is perfectly acceptable. The only think I would recommend... get more paths setup. You're leaving this configuration at risk!

Regards,
Chuck

 

[DukeSSD]

Single path for install is preferred.
Then set your lun / disk reserve policy and install any multipath drivers, then bring the other paths on line, configure your preferred boot list and you are good to go.

 

[AIXLogician]

Before to answer your question as YES,
1st thing, is your FC card NPIV capable? (like 8 gig card and SAN Switch support it as well).
How to check? login in to VIO as padmin and run the below
$lsnports
If you see any FCS's here that means its capable, and if fabric is showing value '1', then switch is also NPIV capable.

If your answer is yes.
Then you can use that same FC card to boot both VIO and LPAR. Once you create the virtual Fibre on VIO/LPAR and assign em, and from the VIO run the command "cspillman" mentioned, you should be good.

Hope this helps

 

[polani]

Thanks everyone for their help on this.

I configured NPIV successfully and added more paths to VIOS rootvg as well. However i have an observation that be default reserve_policy for all disks appear to be "single path", although i am using SDDPCM on both VIO ( because of SAN boot ) and AIX clients ( because of NPIV).

I also faced one time , issue with one of the VIO server on a reboot when it could not find the disk assigned and error says something around disk reservation , so consequently i change reserve_policy for at least rootvg of VIO servers to "no_reserve"

Question is that should i do the same ( reserve_policy= no_reserve) for all luns on all client lpars or leave them with Single_path. Please advice

Many thanks in advance for help!!!



Here comes polani Once again!!!

 

[AIXLogician]

Once you install MPIO, it should automatically change the reserve policy to no_reserve.
But remember, it is always better (I rather say best) to have no_reserve on disks (this really matters on clusters, but always good to have).

I need more details, send me the output of
lsdev -Ccdisk
lslpp -L | egrep -i 'sddpcm|mpio'

The rootvg on VIO could be the local sas disk.