Veritas InfoScale™ 7.4.1 Virtualization Guide - AIX
- Section I. Overview
- Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions in AIX PowerVM virtual environments
- Section II. Implementation
- Setting up Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions in AIX PowerVM virtual environments
- Supported configurations for Virtual I/O servers (VIOS) on AIX
- Dynamic Multi-Pathing in the logical partition (LPAR)
- Dynamic Multi-Pathing in the Virtual I/O server (VIOS)
- Veritas InfoScale products in the logical partition (LPAR)
- Storage Foundation Cluster File System High Availability in the logical partition (LPAR)
- Dynamic Multi-Pathing in the Virtual I/O server (VIOS) and logical partition (LPAR)
- Dynamic Multi-Pathing in the Virtual I/O server (VIOS) and Veritas InfoScale products in the logical partition (LPAR)
- Cluster Server in the logical partition (LPAR)
- Cluster Server in the management LPAR
- Cluster Server in a cluster across logical partitions (LPARs) and physical machines
- Support for N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) in IBM Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) environments
- About setting up logical partitions (LPARs) with Veritas InfoScale products
- Configuring IBM PowerVM LPAR guest for disaster recovery
- Installing and configuring Storage Foundation and High Availability (SFHA) Solutions in the logical partition (LPAR)
- Installing and configuring storage solutions in the Virtual I/O server (VIOS)
- Installing and configuring Cluster Server for logical partition and application availability
- Enabling Veritas Extension for ODM file access from WPAR with VxFS
- Supported configurations for Virtual I/O servers (VIOS) on AIX
- Setting up Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions in AIX PowerVM virtual environments
- Section III. Use cases for AIX PowerVM virtual environments
- Application to spindle visibility
- Simplified storage management in VIOS
- About simplified management
- About Dynamic Multi-Pathing in a Virtual I/O server
- About the Volume Manager (VxVM) component in a Virtual I/O server
- Configuring Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) on Virtual I/O server
- Configuring Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) pseudo devices as virtual SCSI devices
- Extended attributes in VIO client for a virtual SCSI disk
- Virtual IO client adapter settings for Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) in dual-VIOS configurations
- Using DMP to provide multi-pathing for the root volume group (rootvg)
- Boot device management on NPIV presented devices
- Virtual machine (logical partition) availability
- Simplified management and high availability for IBM Workload Partitions
- About IBM Workload Partitions
- About using IBM Workload Partitions (WPARs) with Veritas InfoScale products
- Implementing Storage Foundation support for WPARs
- How Cluster Server (VCS) works with Workload Patitions (WPARs)
- Configuring VCS in WPARs
- Configuring AIX WPARs for disaster recovery using VCS
- High availability and live migration
- About Live Partition Mobility (LPM)
- About the partition migration process and simplified management
- About Storage Foundation and High Availability (SFHA) Solutions support for Live Partition Mobility
- Providing high availability with live migration in a Cluster Server environment
- Providing logical partition (LPAR) failover with live migration
- Limitations and unsupported LPAR features
- Multi-tier business service support
- Server consolidation
- About server consolidation
- About IBM Virtual Ethernet
- About IBM LPARs with virtual SCSI devices
- Using Storage Foundation in the logical partition (LPAR) with virtual SCSI devices
- Using Storage Foundation with virtual SCSI devices
- Setting up DMP for vSCSI devices in the logical partition (LPAR)
- About disabling DMP for vSCSI devices in the logical partition (LPAR)
- Preparing to install or upgrade Storage Foundation with DMP disabled for vSCSI devices in the logical partition (LPAR)
- Disabling DMP multi-pathing for vSCSI devices in the logical partition (LPAR) after installation or upgrade
- Adding and removing DMP support for vSCSI devices for an array
- How DMP handles I/O for vSCSI devices
- Using VCS with virtual SCSI devices
- Physical to virtual migration (P2V)
- Section IV. Reference
About IBM LPARs with virtual SCSI devices
This discussion of vSCSI devices applies only to SAN-based LUNs presented through VIO. Internal devices, volumes, and files presented by VIO as vSCSI devices are not recommended for use with Storage Foundation.
Virtual SCSI uses a client/server model. A Virtual I/O server partition owns the physical I/O devices, and exports the devices as virtual SCSI (vSCSI) resources to the client partitions. The Virtual I/O client is a logical partition that has a virtual client adapter node defined in its device tree. The VIO client uses the vSCSI resources provided by the Virtual I/O Server partition to access the storage devices.
If redundant SAN connections exist to the VIO server, the VIO server provides multi-pathing to the array. Client partitions can also perform multi-pathing between VIO servers in an active/standby configuration. This configuration provides extended protection from VIO configuration and maintenance. Redundant VIO servers are recommended for production workloads.
A virtual SCSI (vSCSI) disk is a resource which can be a SCSI disk, or a volume or file in a VIO Server (VIOS) that is exported to a virtual IO client (VIOC). IBM vSCSI LUNs implement a sub-set of the SCSI protocol. The two main limitations are:
Persistent reservations (SCSI3 - PGR) are not implemented.
The lack of SCSI reservations means that I/O Fencing is not supported. Storage Foundation Cluster File System High Availability (SFCFSHA) and Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC (SFRAC) do not support vSCSI disks, because SFCFSHA and SFRAC require I/O fencing.
Device inquiry limitations.
Storage Foundation (SF) cannot directly fetch the inquiry data, as is done from a physical SCSI disk. However, if the vSCSI disk in VIOC is backed by a dmpnode in VIOS, then all the inquiry data that can be fetched from a physical disk can be fetched.
Cross-platform data sharing (CDS) functionality is supported.