I have 1 PCI-X Dual Channel Ultra320 SCSI Adapter card for my p570 server. I would like to split the 2 channels for the usage of 2 tape drives in different LPARs. Is that possible?
For example, I have 2 LPARs running in p570 server, LPAR-A configured the Ultra320 card as pci7 in slot distribution. I can lsslot -c slot and can see the card. The problem is that the 2 channels of this card will be configured together to the LPAR-A.
Is there any way to configure only 1 channel to this LPAR and swift the other channel to another LPAR which in this case LPAR-B?
Tq.
No.
LPAR resources are assigned at the PCI level so both ports of the adapter will belong to which ever LPAR has the slot.
Explore VIO if possible. You may need to buy a license.
If tape drive is only used once in a while, you can always DLPAR the Ultra320 from one lpar to another.
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I understand that I can DLPAR the card to 2nd LPAR for the usage, but I would like to use the tape drive together to shortened the backup window. That's why I would like the 2 LPARs to use the SCSI card (w/ 2 channels) together.
If I made the SCSI as VIO device, am I able to split them into 2? How?
Vscsi sadly only supports disk and optical devices (CD / DVD) at the moment, i.e. tapes are currently not supported.
You could be brave and script the dlpar operation, then schedule a backup on one LPAR, then give it time to finish, scripted DLPAR the adapter to the other LPAR and then back that up. Use cron or similar to run the backup in the window that the LPAR has the adapter for.
That will still involve 2 backup time frames. What I want is 1 backup time frame. The only solution to my problem is to buy another SCSI Card, am I right?
If you have a backup software like tivoli or so, you can configure on of the ystem as a backup server.
I think buying a scsi card is un-necessary, If you have sufficient space on disk [ you can use any un-mirrored storage as a temporary location to backup ] you can schedule one lpar's backup onto disk first and then to the tape when the tape becomes available.
Btw, a design question. Why are you specific about the backup timings ? Are you doing a "cold backup" ? i.e. shutdown the apps and backup ?. Try to explore a "hot backup" method. Most of the standard products supports that. So that you can run backups at any time whilst your application is still available to the users.
Regards, Kaps
I understand that hot backup is better than cold backup. But my database is around 500GB in size and I have insufficient disk space to run the hot backup in Oracle (which is rman).
My database is currently in RAID10 and it results in 1TB in use for residing DB. Extra diskspace for backup purposes is almost impossible to management team. Any other way I can do the full backup without using more diskspace?
I will also need to consider the restoration time (DR) which the faster way is to restore all mount points into a new server and up the oracle and run. Differential restoration will consume too much time.
By the way, may I know what is the command in AIX to run the tape-to-tape backup? I would like to test on it to produce onsite and offsite tapes.
Tq.
I think you are looking for the "backup" command. But I think investing on a backup software is worth, looking at the sizes you are talking about.
To save buying the scsi card, if you have a good network - virtual ethernet is the key to a fast local network, can't you just remote mount one of the tape drives or backup to a remote device?