[JodyTek]

I hope someone can help me with this problem as I have been beating me head against it for a week now. Here is a summary.

What I have:
1 P5 550 with 4 HBA cards
1 Brocade fibre switch
1 Cisco Fibre switch
1 DS4700
2 San Volume Controllers

The setup:
2 VIO LPARs (VIO1 & VIO2) each having 2 fibre cards. Each having one path through a Brocade switch, and one path through a Cisco switch.
Zones on each switch from VIO1 to SVC and the same for VIO2.
2 Luns on the DS4700 are presented to the SVC. Both VIO1 and VIO2 are setup as hosts on the SVC.
I have created Image Mode Disks (VDisk) from the 2 Luns.
Then mapped the vdisk to the hosts. (VIO1 – vdisk1) (VIO2 – vdisk2)

The Problem:
VIO1 installed without any problem and is currently up and running.
VIO2 boots up and sees the disk as hdisk0 and shows bootable from the install menu.
When I select to install I get error: 0514-047 Cannot access a device. BOS Install: Could not initialize hdisk0. I can do an option to “Perform System Maintenance and Then Continue” and do an lsdev and all devices are listed and available.

What I’ve done to trouble shoot:
Well first I deleted and completely recreated VIO2s configuration thinking I may have missed something along the way. Not a chance, I have triple checked every single thing and VIO1 and VIO2 are setup identical.

I can reverse the disk mapping, VIO1/vdisk2 and VIO2/vdisk1 and basically get the same problem but in reverse.

I can take the Lun presented to the SVC and map it directly from the DS4700 to VIO2 Lpar and install VIO Server without any problem.

Here is where it gets interesting to me.
I can map the Luns as follows to VIO1 vdisk1 as hdisk0 and vdisk2 as hdisk1 and access the hdisk1 with no problems, I can mkvg’s and file systems copy data. The disk is fine.

Next I created a new AIX LPAR profile. I created the profile to use the exact same resources as VIO2 has and just have VIO2 shutdown. I can boot and install AIX using the same resources and disk without any problem.

So, I feel that I have ruled any problems with paths or hardware. I am truly stumped.

Someone please tell me the secret handshake to get this working.

[Administrator]

You likely have two problems. First lets consider your inability to install one of the VIO servers. Reduce the number of paths to one path and I'm sure your installation problem will go away.

Which then gets to why the other one is working properly. Want to bet there is a zoning problem with that one?

Just a hunch, but I've seen this exact siutation twice before with clients and this was the problem both times.

[JodyTek]

Yeah, I tend to agree with the thought process. Pathing can certainly be a problem, and since I am going through daul SVC's there are 8 paths total. Here is the lspath from VIO1. I don't think there is a problem here. But maybe I am not seeing it.

$ lspath
status name parent connection
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi0 5005076801403d5e,0
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi0 5005076801303d5e,0
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi0 5005076801403e4b,0
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi0 5005076801303e4b,0
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi1 5005076801103d5e,0
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi1 5005076801203d5e,0
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi1 5005076801103e4b,0
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi1 5005076801203e4b,0
$

I can try removing one of the HBA's for VIO2 and see what that get's me.

I will give that a try tomorrow.