This quick tip provides some insight into what to expect when configuring tape drives on AIX with Virtual Fibre Channel adapters, the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS), and NPIV.
In this environment, the 8GB Fibre Channel (FC) adapters (Feature Code 5735) have been assigned to the Virtual I/O Servers. A single dual-port 8GB FC adapter is assigned to each VIOS. These adapters are dedicated for use with tape only. The tape library in question is an IBM TS3310.
The AIX LPARs were initially configured with Virtual FC adapters for connectivity to FC SAN disk (XIV). As shown in the lspath output below, fcs0 through fcs3 are used exclusively for access to disk only.
# lsdev -Cc adapter | grep fcs
fcs0 Available 30-T1 Virtual Fibre Channel Client Adapter
fcs1 Available 31-T1 Virtual Fibre Channel Client Adapter
fcs2 Available 32-T1 Virtual Fibre Channel Client Adapter
fcs3 Available 33-T1 Virtual Fibre Channel Client Adapter
# lspath
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi0
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi0
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi0
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi0
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi1
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi1
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi1
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi1
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi2
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi2
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi2
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi2
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi3
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi3
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi3
Enabled hdisk0 fscsi3
..etc.. for the other disks on the system
In order for us to connect to our tape drives (of which there were four in total in the TS3310), we configured four additional virtual FC adapters for the LPAR.
First we ensured that the physical adapters were available and had fabric connectivity. On both VIOS, we used the lsnports command to determine the state of the adapters and their NPIV capability. As shown in the following output, the physical adapter’s fcs4 and fcs5 were both available and NPIV ready (i.e. there was a 1 in the fabric column. If it was zero then the adapter may not be connected to an NPIV capable SAN).
$ lsnports
name physloc fabric tports aports swwpns awwpns
fcs0 U78A0.001.DNWK4W9-P1-C3-T1 1 64 52 2048 1988
fcs1 U78A0.001.DNWK4W9-P1-C3-T2 1 64 52 2048 1988
fcs2 U5877.001.0084548-P1-C1-T1 1 64 61 2048 2033
fcs3 U5877.001.0084548-P1-C1-T2 1 64 61 2048 2033
fcs4 U5877.001.0084548-P1-C2-T1 1 64 64 2048 2048
fcs5 U5877.001.0084548-P1-C2-T2 1 64 64 2048 2048
When I initially checked the state of the adapters on both VIOS, I encountered the following output from lsnports:
$ lsnports
name physloc fabric tports aports swwpns awwpns
fcs0 U78A0.001.DNWK4W9-P1-C3-T1 1 64 52 2048 1988
fcs1 U78A0.001.DNWK4W9-P1-C3-T2 1 64 52 2048 1988
fcs2 U5877.001.0084548-P1-C1-T1 1 64 61 2048 2033
fcs3 U5877.001.0084548-P1-C1-T2 1 64 61 2048 2033
fcs4 U5877.001.0084548-P1-C2-T1 0 64 64 2048 2048
As you can see, only the fcs4 adapter was discovered, fcs5 was missing and the fabric value for fcs4 was 0. Both of these issues were the result of physical connectivity issues to the SAN. The cables were unplugged and/or they had a loopback adapter plugged into the interface. There was an error in the error report indicating link errors on fcs4 but not for fcs5.
$ errlog
IDENTIFIER TIMESTAMP T C RESOURCE_NAME DESCRIPTION
7BFEEA1F 0502104011 T H fcs4 LINK ERROR
Once the ports were physically connected to the SAN switches, I removed the entry for fcs4 from the ODM (as shown below) and then ran cfgmgr on the VIOS.
$ r oem
oem_setup_env
# rmdev -dRl fcs4
fcnet4 deleted
sfwcomm4 deleted
fscsi4 deleted
fcs4 deleted
# cfgmgr
# exit
$
Then both fcs4 and fcs5 were discovered and configured correctly.
$ lsnports
name physloc fabric tports aports swwpns awwpns
fcs0 U78A0.001.DNWK4W9-P1-C3-T1 1 64 52 2048 1988
fcs1 U78A0.001.DNWK4W9-P1-C3-T2 1 64 52 2048 1988
fcs2 U5877.001.0084548-P1-C1-T1 1 64 61 2048 2033
fcs3 U5877.001.0084548-P1-C1-T2 1 64 61 2048 2033
fcs4 U5877.001.0084548-P1-C2-T1 1 64 64 2048 2048
fcs5 U5877.001.0084548-P1-C2-T2 1 64 64 2048 2048
Our next step was to configure the new virtual FC host adapters on the VIOS and the new virtual FC adapters on the client LPAR. Below is a conceptual diagram of how the LPAR would connect to the tape drives.
As you can see, each VIO server has a single two port FC adapter which is dedicated for tape. These adapter ports appear as fcs4 and fcs5 on each VIO server (vio1 and vio2).
The AIX LPAR (tsm1) has additional Virtual FC adapters, dedicated for tape as well. These adapters appear as fcs4, fcs5, fcs6 and fcs7.
The plan was for fcs4 on tsm1 to map to fcs4 on vio1, fcs5 to map to fcs5 on vio1 and fcs6 to map to fcs4 on vio2 and fcs7 to map to fcs5 on vio2.
The virtual adapter slot configuration was as follows:
LPAR: tsm1 VIOS: vio1
U8233.E8B.06XXXXX-V4-C34-T1 > U8233.E8B.06XXXXX-V1-C60
U8233.E8B.06XXXXX-V4-C35-T1 > U8233.E8B.06XXXXX-V1-C61
LPAR: tsm1 VIOS: vio2
U8233.E8B.06XXXXX-V4-C36-T1 > U8233.E8B.06XXXXX-V2-C60
U8233.E8B.06XXXXX-V4-C37-T1 > U8233.E8B.06XXXXX-V2-C61
We created two new virtual FC host adapters on vio1 and two new virtual FC host adapters on vio2. This was done by updating the LPARs profile (on the HMC) with the new adapters and then adding them with a DLPAR operation on each VIOS. Once we had run the cfgdev command on each VIOS, to bring in the new virtual FC host adapters, next we needed to map them to the physical FC ports.
Using the vfcmap command on each of the VIOS, we mapped the physical ports to the virtual host adapters as follows:
1. Map tsm1 vfchost30 adapter to physical FC adapter fcs4 on vio1.
$ vfcmap –vadpater vfchost30 –fcp fcs4
2. Map tsm1 vfchost31 adapter to physical FC adapter fcs5 on vio1.
$ vfcmap –vadapter vfchost31 – fcp fcs5
3. Map tsm1 vfchost30 adapter to physical FC adapter fcs4 on vio2.
$ vfcmap –vadapter vfchost30 – fcp fcs4
4. Map tsm1 vfchost31 adapter to physical FC adapter fcs5 on vio2.
$ vfcmap –vadapter vfchost31 –fcp fcs5
Next we used DLPAR (using the following procedure) to update the client LPAR with four new virtual FC adapters. After running the cfgmgr command on the LPAR, we confirmed we had four new virtual FC adapters. We ensured that we saved the LPARs current configuration, as outlined in the procedure.
# lsdev –Cc adapter grep fcs
fcs0 Available 30-T1 Virtual Fibre Channel Client Adapter
fcs1 Available 31-T1 Virtual Fibre Channel Client Adapter
fcs2 Available 32-T1 Virtual Fibre Channel Client Adapter
fcs3 Available 33-T1 Virtual Fibre Channel Client Adapter
fcs4 Available 34-T1 Virtual Fibre Channel Client Adapter
fcs5 Available 35-T1 Virtual Fibre Channel Client Adapter
fcs6 Available 36-T1 Virtual Fibre Channel Client Adapter
fcs7 Available 33-T1 Virtual Fibre Channel Client Adapter
On both VIOS, we confirmed that the physical to virtual mapping on the FC adapters was correct using the lsmap –all –npiv command. Also checking that client LPAR had successfully logged into the SAN by noting the Status: LOGGED_IN entry in the lsmap output for each adapter.
vio1:
Name Physloc ClntID ClntName ClntOS
------------- ---------------------------------- ------ -------------- -------
vfchost30 U8233.E8B.06XXXXX-V1-C60 4 tsm1 AIX
Status:LOGGED_IN
FC name:fcs4 FC loc code:U5877.001.0084548-P1-C2-T1
Ports logged in:1
Flags:a<LOGGED_IN,STRIP_MERGE>
VFC client name:fcs4 VFC client DRC:U8233.E8B.06XXXXX-V4-C34-T1
Name Physloc ClntID ClntName ClntOS
------------- ---------------------------------- ------ -------------- -------
vfchost31 U8233.E8B.06XXXXX-V1-C61 4 tsm1 AIX
Status:LOGGED_IN
FC name:fcs5 FC loc code:U5877.001.0084548-P1-C2-T2
Ports logged in:1
Flags:a<LOGGED_IN,STRIP_MERGE>
VFC client name:fcs5 VFC client DRC:U8233.E8B.06XXXXX-V4-C35-T1
vio2:
Name Physloc ClntID ClntName ClntOS
------------- ---------------------------------- ------ -------------- -------
vfchost30 U8233.E8B.06XXXXX-V2-C60 4 tsm1 AIX
Status:LOGGED_IN
FC name:fcs4 FC loc code:U5877.001.0084548-P1-C5-T1
Ports logged in:1
Flags:a<LOGGED_IN,STRIP_MERGE>
VFC client name:fcs6 VFC client DRC:U8233.E8B.06XXXXX-V4-C36-T1
Name Physloc ClntID ClntName ClntOS
------------- ---------------------------------- ------ -------------- -------
vfchost31 U8233.E8B.06XXXXX-V2-C61 4 tsm1 AIX
Status:LOGGED_IN
FC name:fcs5 FC loc code:U5877.001.0084548-P1-C5-T2
Ports logged in:1
Flags:a<LOGGED_IN,STRIP_MERGE>
VFC client name:fcs7 VFC client DRC:U8233.E8B.06XXXXX-V4-C37-T1
We were able to capture the WWPNs for the new adapters at this point. This information was required in order to zone the tape drives to the system.
# for i in 4 5 6 7
> do
> echo fcs$i
> lscfg -vpl fcs$i | grep Net
> echo
> done
fcs4
Network Address.............C0507603A2920088
fcs5
Network Address.............C0507603A292008A
fcs6
Network Address.............C0507603A292008C
fcs7
Network Address.............C0507603A292008E
The IBM Atape device drivers were installed prior to zoning in the TS3310 tape drives.
# lslpp -l | grep -i atape
Atape.driver 12.2.4.0 COMMITTED IBM AIX Enhanced Tape and
Then, once the drives had been zoned to the new WWPNs, we ran cfgmgr on the AIX LPAR to configure the tape drives.
# lsdev -Cc tape
#
# cfgmgr
# lsdev -Cc tape
rmt0 Available 34-T1-01-PRI IBM 3580 Ultrium Tape Drive (FCP)
rmt1 Available 34-T1-01-PRI IBM 3580 Ultrium Tape Drive (FCP)
rmt2 Available 35-T1-01-ALT IBM 3580 Ultrium Tape Drive (FCP)
rmt3 Available 35-T1-01-ALT IBM 3580 Ultrium Tape Drive (FCP)
rmt4 Available 36-T1-01-PRI IBM 3580 Ultrium Tape Drive (FCP)
rmt5 Available 36-T1-01-PRI IBM 3580 Ultrium Tape Drive (FCP)
rmt6 Available 37-T1-01-ALT IBM 3580 Ultrium Tape Drive (FCP)
rmt7 Available 37-T1-01-ALT IBM 3580 Ultrium Tape Drive (FCP)
smc0 Available 34-T1-01-PRI IBM 3576 Library Medium Changer (FCP)
smc1 Available 35-T1-01-ALT IBM 3576 Library Medium Changer (FCP)
smc2 Available 37-T1-01-ALT IBM 3576 Library Medium Changer (FCP)
Our new tape drives were now available on our AIX system. These drives were to be used with Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM).
Please refer to the following links for more information relating to virtual Fibre Channel configuration in a VIOS environment and TSM support for NPIV and tape.
IBM PowerVM Virtualization Managing and Monitoring
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247590.html
PowerVM – Dynamically adding a Virtual Fibre Channel adapter to a client partition
http://www.aixmind.com/?p=798
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for AIX Server Requirements and Support
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21052220
IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager, Version 2.2: Supported storage subsystems
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/tsminfo/v6r2/topic/com.ibm.itsm.fcm.unx.doc/c_fcmu_ovr_supstorage.html
Using NPIV in TSM Client with Storage Agent installed
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/tivolistoragemanager/Using+NPIV+in+TSM+Client+with+Storage+Agent+installed
Chris Gibson is an AIX enterprise systems engineer for Southern Cross Computer Systems. Follow him on Twitter: @cgibbo.