VIOS and virtual FC

Hello,

In my environment, I have 2 VIOS. There is 1 lpar uses the first VIOS. Now we would like to move it to second VIOS.

My question is, can we migrate the virtual FC on the lpar to second VIOS?

If not, we have to create new virtual FC on second VIOS and map it to the lpar. This also means that we will do the zoning again and lun masking for new WWPN.

Please advise me if this is possible.

--- Post updated at 04:47 PM ---

My AIX version is 6.1 and Power machine is 7.

Hi, need to know a bit more info if you don't mind.
Are you wanting to do a Live Partition Mobility between two Power7 frames?
Or are you saying you have a single Power7 frame with one fully configured VIO, and you are trying to setup a 2nd VIO for redundancy?
Are your systems managed by an HMC or are you using the IVM?

If you are using an HMC I can try to help the best I can. I have no experience with an IVM. Also, if HMC what version is it?

Thanks!

Hi,

The first statement is correct. The second thing is, can we move/migrate the virtual FC on vios1 to vios2 without changing the WWPN, not to setup a 2nd VIOS.

Just to ask technically if we can do that or not without LPM. Or we have to setup the LPM for live migration?

I'm using the HMC and version is V7R7.8.0 SR1.

Regards,

So there's a bit of homework to be done here.
First your Power7frame should have the split backplane feature. Your IBM sales rep should be able to tell if that frame is capable of it. This will let us unstall the VIO on the 2nd raid/hdisk's Sorry, don't have the feature codes off the top of my head.

Secondly, you will need additional HBA's and Ethernet adapters that are not allocated to any other lpar.

Lets take this example here: (Looks like junk can't post screenshots yet)

 U78AA.001.WZSJVNE-P1-T9    PCI-E SAS Controller        10
U78AA.001.WZSJVNE-P1-T7    Universal Serial Bus UHC Spec        11
U78AA.001.WZSJVNE-P1-C19-T1    PCI-E SAS Controller    Required    12
U78AA.001.WZSJVNE-P1-C7    1 Gigabit Ethernet (UTP) 4 Port Adapter PCIE-4x/Short        13
U78AA.001.WZSJVNE-P1-C2    1 Gigabit Ethernet (UTP) 4 Port Adapter PCIE-4x/Short    Required    513
U78AA.001.WZSJVNE-P1-C3    8 Gigabit PCI Express Dual Port Fibre Channel Adapter    Required    514
U78AA.001.WZSJVNE-P1-C4    Empty slot        515
U78AA.001.WZSJVNE-P1-C5    Empty slot        516
U78AA.001.WZSJVNE-P1-C6    Empty slot        517
U78AA.001.WZSJVNE-P1-C1-C2    8 Gigabit PCI Express Dual Port Fibre Channel Adapter        520
U78AA.001.WZSJVNE-P1-C1-C4    Empty slot        521
U78AA.001.WZSJVNE-P1-C1-C3    Empty slot        522
U78AA.001.WZSJVNE-P1-C1-C1    1 Gigabit Ethernet (UTP) 4 Port Adapter PCIE-4x/Short        523
 

This is all the hardware that I have available in one of my Frames. As you can see, I have one SAS controller, one Ethernet adapter, and one HBA as 'required' for this VIO profile.

If I showed you the other VIO, you would see Line 1, Line 4, and Line 10 would be required for the other VIO.
What I am trying to say, is if you do not have the physical IO to handle another VIO, there is nothing you can do.

Now, moving on:
Deploy the VIO via the TASKS > Configuration > Create Partition > VIO Server.
That should take you to a wizard to set up the partition ID (make note of this!) and define the resources. You can use your other VIO as reference.
From there, install the VIO OS on the hdisks mirror your rootvg or whatever other setup you need todo, get the WWN's and give them to your SAN team to zone.
Yes, you will need to zone the WWN's from the 2nd vio. But we are not ready for that yet.

So this part I'm going to be a bit fuzzy on, as I always had dual VIO's setup before deploying a LPAR. If any other Power guy wants to weigh in, now would be the time!

We need to create virtual adapters to tie into the new VIO.
Select the NEW installed VIO from the HMC, and under TASKS expand Dynamic Partitioning. Then select Virtual Adapters.
Enter your Virtual Fibre Channel Adapter number, select the client partition, and then enter the client adapter number.
Now, save all that information because we need to add that to the default profile as well. Reason being, the dynamic settings will disappear when the vio is rebooted as its not part of the default profile.
So, under TASKS again for the same vio, this time select Configuration, Manage Profiles. Repeat the tasks there with the same values you used.
Word of caution, you do not want to use the same adapter ID with two different VIO's.
What I do is match Client partition ID to VIO ID.
So, Server Adapter 301 is lined up to client adapter 301. That says to me, ClientID3, VIO1, then on the 2nd vio, I have 302 lined up with 302.
Now, on the client you are going to repeat the same steps that we did at the VIO. Dynamic Partitioning, add in Virtual Adapters. Then edit the default profile to add in the virtual adapters so when the client boots all the settings are present.
From here on, you should be able to zone the WWN's, cfgdev -vdev to find the hdisks. At this point you will want to run a chdev -dev hdiskXX -attr reserve_policy=no_reserve on all hdisks that are coming from SAN that you wish to have mapped though both vio's to the client lpar.

Then run mkvdev -vdev -vadapter <vhost> -dev <devicename that makes seance to you>

Example: mkvdev -vdev hdisk21 -vadapter vhost0 -dev dbtst4

Last but not least Ethernet adapters.
Without knowing how your Ethernet is configured on the VIO I can only guess how its setup and if not done carefully can cause a loop.

I am pretty dang sure I'm forgetting something. Its early, and I've not had enough coffee. I cannot yet posts links so take a google search for the vio cheat sheet

Feel free to toss me a direct message if you wish.

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