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Operating Systems AIX AIX LPAR FC connection to SAN Post 303031468 by bakunin on Friday 1st of March 2019 01:28:51 AM
Old 03-01-2019
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phat
Let me clarify again. On the power machine which has physical FCs attached to SAN via SAN switch, as can be seen on my environment, there are 2 LPARs as below:

1. First LPAR with virtual FC (assigned by VIOS) and can use the LUN allocated to it, this point can be understood as it uses NPIV.

2. Second LPAR does not use VIOS and virtual FC, because with the lsdev -Cc adapter | grep fcs as showed, the FC adapter are "physical ones", not virtual as it does not start with C in the WWPN.
hmm.... instead of checking if the WWPN starts with "C" or with something else consult the LPARs profile on the HMC (or IVM, if you have no HMC). You will either see a (or several) physical adapter(s) there (along with the WWPNs) or virtual adapters coming from the VIOS(es). This is a surefire method, checking the WWPNs for starting characters is not.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phat
My question is, how can it connects and uses the LUN which is allocated to it? As my thought, it is utilizing also the physical FC port of power machine.

if first LPAR uses NPIV, so what technique does second LPAR use?
OK, at least i begin to understand where your confusion comes from: "NPIV" is NOT a type of connection or a protocol at all. NPIV is a way of giving one (physical) adapter several WWPNs at once. A WWPN is a unique identifier and every "initiator" - that is a port of an FC adapter, a FC-switch-port or a LUN - has one. Think of it like a MAC-address for network interfaces. NPIV now allows to give assign several WWPNs to one such port or, respectively, create several virtual (logical) adapters all with different WWPNs which are based on a single physical adapter. So the VIOS gets assigned the physical adapter (which has its own WWPN), then creates several virtual adapters ech with its own WWPN and gives each of these virtual adapters to different LPARs. The LPARs will use the WWPN of the virtual adapter assigned but the traffice is (in reality) routed through the physical adapter. This is why i compared it to an IP-alias: an IP alias is an interface having two or more (instead of one) IP addresses. But this doesn't result in a certain (form of) communication. The communcation will still be "HTTP" or "TCP" or whatever.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phat
My question is, how can it connects and uses the LUN which is allocated to it?
OK, let us consider a normal TCP/IP network again. A network is a connection of any to any. That means: each station can communicate with every other station. The other might respond or not, there might be authorisation issues, but the basic means of communication are there. The situation in an FC-network is fundamentally different: there is no "authorisation" as such but only certain connections are allowed and all others are forbidden: if you connect via ssh to a system you are asked for, say, a password. That means the network itself doesn't care about your authorisation because the ssh-connection is made. Only the system there cares about that and either allows or denies you access. In an FC-network nobody is asked for any password (or other forms of authorisation) but instead unauthorised (or rather: unwanted) connections are not even possible from the start. You would not want the disks of server A being visible in server B or vice versa.

Basically you need a set of rules that adapter A is allowed to connect to LUN B using FC-switch-port C. Creating and maintaining such a set of rules is called "zoning" and it is done by configuring the FC-switch (or "switches", because this is usually a redundant, load-balancing and high-available system). Basically a "zone" is a rule that allows a certain system (or, to be precise, its FC-adapters identified by its WWPN) to access a certain LUN over a certain way. You may have several zones for a single LUN allowing i.e. two system to access the LUN for instance in case of a cluster. All this is a bit reminiscent of firewall rules.

The process in detail is rather complex with a large margin for making things very complicated and i am not an expert in that sector - not even by a stretch. I suggest you consult specialised pages if you want to understand details like i.e. "port-based zoning", etc.. But at a very fundamental level this is it what it .

I hope this helps.

bakunin

Last edited by bakunin; 03-01-2019 at 06:17 AM..
 

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