[steevojb]

Hi everyone

I have a server with a physical fibre HBA. I want to be able to map a LUN from the storage to that HBA and also map the same LUN from the VIO server. (The VIO mapping will be a backup connection should I lose the HBA card)

I have tried the find examples and whether or not this is supported but failed

Can anyone help ?

TIA

Steve

[FASherman]

If I understand you right, you have an HBA in your LPAR and an HBA in the VIO server. You want to assign a LUN to both WWNs, and assign the hdisk on the VIO server to a vdev and present it to the same LPAR, so that it will have two views of the same device?

The answer is it will fail and here's why this is a bad idea.

You will have one device, same PVID, same VGDA, presented as both a FC drive and a VSCSI drive. MPIO is not going to be able to handle the mixed protocols.

The better solution is to reassign the LPAR HBA to the VIO server. It will not have two paths to the LUN, which it can manage via MPIO to provide authomatic path redundancy. Then just virtualize it as you were planning.

[steevojb]

Hi Fred

Thanks for the reply.

I already have 2 HBA'a assigned to the VIO server. Is it possible to make use of the 3rd to balance the data path across the 3 HBA's

TIA

Steve

[jojowil]

Steve,

What about two VIOS servers? one HBA each.

http://techsupport.services.ibm.com/...OServerswp.pdf

I'm using this with mostly good results. (I say mostly because I have an EMC CX-700 and working out some failover issues, but that's what development is for ;-) )

Cheers,

Bill

[steevojb]

Hi,

I only have the one storage controller , therefore can only have one VIO server

Thanks for the reply

Steve

[FASherman]

Originally Posted by jojowil

Steve,

What about two VIOS servers? one HBA each.

http://techsupport.services.ibm.com/...OServerswp.pdf

I'm using this with mostly good results. (I say mostly because I have an EMC CX-700 and working out some failover issues, but that's what development is for ;-) )

Cheers,

Bill

I'm not a big fan of VIO servers with single points of failure, ie one HBA each, because it doesn't offer any advantage over a single VIO server with both HBAs.Steevobj, with only one HBA, your options for providing redundancy are limited. The HBA will be a SPOF.