PowerHA HACMP on VIOS servers

Few questions regarding Power HA ( previously known as HACMP) and VIOS POWERVM IVM ( IBM Virtualization I/O Server )

[1] Is it possible to create HACMP cluster between two VIOS servers

Physical Machine_1
VIOS_SERVER_1
LPAR_1
SHARED_DISK_XX

VIOS_SERVER_2
Physical Machine_2
LPAR_2
SHARED_DISK_XX

In this scenario, You will have to assign the shared disk first to the VIOS server and from there it will be assigned to LPAR.

Would HACMP work on this shared disk ?

[2] Can you have DLPAR ( Dynamic LPAR ) capabilities in IVM , that is assign one physical Fiber Adapter card to LPAR directly ? IVM VIOS ( which is you are running VIOS without HMC = Hardware Management Console )

in this scenario, you can give the LPAR , shared disk directly from the Storage ? ( provided feature is supported ?! )

[3] DO I need HMC for NPIV or can it run on IVM only ?

What is NPIV?
N_Port ID Virtualization(NPIV) is a standardized method for virtualizing a physical fibre channel port. An NPIV-capable fibre channel HBA can have multiple N_Ports, each with a unique identity. NPIV coupled with the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) adapter sharing capabilities allow a physical fibre channel HBA to be shared across multiple guest operating systems. The PowerVM implementation of NPIV enables POWER logical partitions (LPARs) to have virtual fibre channel HBAs, each with a dedicated world wide port name. Each virtual fibre channel HBA has a unique SAN identity similar to that of a dedicated physical HBA.
The minimum requirement for the 8 Gigabit Dual Port Fibre Channel adapter, feature code 5735, to support NPIV is 110304

Short answer is yes. On both systems you need to make sure the attribute no_reserve is set. It is the same process that you would use to setup MPIO with dual VIO servers in one system:
From an article I wrote years ago:

I am not sure of the current status, there has been some rumor that it might be supported, but I do not see it (assigning an adapter) in the IVM user interface. I use IVM a lot with my test systems - as I do not have an HMC.
So, I assume no - no dynamic resource allocation of adapters, only processor, memory and virtual adapters.

NPIV can be used with IVM. I will need more time to find the command syntax to create an NPIV adapter. Again, I am limited by my test systems (Power5). On Power6 and Power7 I would expect it to be visible in the IVM web interface. Just remember, the other minimum requirements are: Power6 at high enough firmware, and a SAN switch that supports NPIV. The switch does not have to be 8G speed (in the beginning many customers worked with 8G cards connected to 2G ports - not any more these days :))

POWER7 information
Dynamically managing physical adapters

IBM

You can use the Integrated Virtualization Manager to change the physical adapters that a running logical partition uses.

ensure that the Integrated Virtualization Manager is at version 1.5 or later.

HTH

I had asked here

and was replied

My question:

If I have one VIOS Machine running IVM and SAN Storage connected to it, is there a way to assign one shared disk on two LPARS

• I have one Fiber Card which is on VIOS IVM
• I will assign a disk from Storage to VIOS IVM
• from VIOS IVM how can i assign it to two LPARs for stimulating HACMP ?

thanks

yes, you can if the stoarge is an hdisk to the vios, not when the storage is a file or logical volume.
if i recall, just repeat the mkvdev command.

So, I can assign same HDISK to two or more , LPARs
example: from SAN Storage I have allocated HDISK8 to PowerVM IVM

I will have to create virtual scsi for all three LPARs
then assign HDISK8 to them, and as you mentioned above would have to set the reserve_policy=no_reserve .

is this right ?

i have done it with iscsi. and, yes, i assume the no_resdrve setting is also needed. been nearly 18 months since i have played with ha.
have fun.
ps, if working with systemmirror 7.x remember that the ha interfaces will multicast for caa. if you have a lot of systems in a vlan they may be affected..