Hello, I need to test whether our product will work with GPFS filesystems and I have some questions regarding the setup:

1. Do I need to dedicate an entire hard disk if I want to have GPFS on it? Or can I somehow split a disk into 2 virtual disks, and only use 1 for gpfs?
2. If lspv returns "none" that means the disk is connected but has not been allocated, and thus available for use in GPFS setup?
Example (hdisk3):

[root@aix01: /]# lspv
hdisk0          00ca0c3546524b4e                    rootvg          active
hdisk1          00ca0c35797dab06                    vg1             active
hdisk2          00ca0c35797daba9                    vg1             active
hdisk3          none                                None
hdisk4          00ca0c35645c51bf                    san1            active
hdisk5          00ca0c3564646ef3                    san2            active

Hello!

To your first question, GPFS is a full device allocation, therefore, anything you wish to allocate will be consumed as an NSD.

Regarding your second question, yes, that disk is more than likely empty and therefore can be used for GPFS.

Finally, GPFS can run on one node (a single node quorum) and can have additional nodes added to it later. Make sure you have good time synchronization (xntpd) and decent performing disk storage.

Best regards,
jstnobdy

---------- Post updated at 09:02 PM ---------- Previous update was at 08:57 PM ----------

One more thing, GPFS is pretty tolerant, just make sure you define "dataOnly" and "metadataOnly" disks when you create your NSDs (mmcrnsd). In this case, allocate 'x'-amount of storage for dataOnly NSDs and a relatively small disk for metadataOnly.

Good luck. If you have any questions, let me know.

Ah okay, that makes sense. If I have existing data on that device, will it wipe it all out once I add it to the cluster?
Thank you very much for the answer!

Yep. For testing it would be nice to do a LV but you can't. Sorry.

Gotcha. Thanks again!