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Operating Systems AIX [ASK] - AIX Fibre Channel behavior Post 303031937 by bakunin on Friday 8th of March 2019 01:33:33 AM
Old 03-08-2019
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phat
Let me introduce about the context and my environment.
We have an AIX 6.1 system, it has 4 FC channels
Code:
[root@xxx] / > lsdev -Cc adapter | grep fcs
fcs0 Available 23-T1 Virtual Fibre Channel Client Adapter
fcs1 Available 23-T1 Virtual Fibre Channel Client Adapter
fcs2 Available 23-T1 Virtual Fibre Channel Client Adapter
fcs3 Available 23-T1 Virtual Fibre Channel Client Adapter

- 2 virtual FC fcs0, fcs2 comes from VIOS_A --> mapped to the only 1 physical FC
- 2 virtual FC fcs1, fcs3 comes from VIOS_B --> mapped to the only 1 physical FC

--> We can say we have 2 physical FC path.
At first a few general remarks: If you want to analyse aspects of a system configuration in a (virtualised) AIX environment what you posted is not helpful at all. You need to look elsewhere, especially:

1) The LPARs profile on the HMC, either via the Web GUI or the commandline (lssyscfg and lshwres)

2) VIOS profile on the HMC

3) from the VIOS commandline the various aspects of virtualised resources (lsdev, lsvdev, lsmap, ...)

What you posted simply won't tell you (or us) anything useful (that is: useful on its own) information about the system. Its like if i would ask you how to repair my car and when you ask back "which car?" i'd say "a yellow one".

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phat
There is a chance that I reboot the machine, and it cannot boot up. It said that the boot partition is not found. In the SMS mode, I have checked and found that the fcs2 is failed, and fcs3 is partially worked

Code:
WorldWidePortName: c050760941350104
 1.  202700a0b86e87a4,0                 0 MB Disk drive - reserved
 2.  202700a0b86e87a4,1000000000000     107 GB Disk drive
 3.  202700a0b86e87a4,2000000000000     0 MB Disk drive - reserved
 4.  202700a0b86e87a4,3000000000000     0 MB Disk drive - reserved
 5.  202700a0b86e87a4,4000000000000     0 MB Disk drive - reserved
 6.  202700a0b86e87a4,5000000000000     0 MB Disk drive - reserved
 7.  202700a0b86e87a4,6000000000000     0 MB Disk drive - reserved
 8.  202700a0b86e87a4,7000000000000     0 MB Disk drive - reserved
 9.  202700a0b86e87a4,8000000000000     107 GB Disk drive
10.  202700a0b86e87a4,9000000000000     107 GB Disk drive
11.  202700a0b86e87a4,a000000000000     107 GB Disk drive
12.  202700a0b86e87a4,b000000000000     0 MB Disk drive - reserved

First action, I have asked the storage guy to remove the fcs3 WWPN from the mapping, try to detect the boot device, then asked again to remove fcs2 WWPN, the both case didn't help.

Second action, I asked the storage guy to map back the fcs2 & fcs3 WWPN back to the machine. Try to detect and get the positive results. Now fcs3 can see all the LUN and detect the boot device.
Code:
Select Attached Device
  Pathname: /vdevice/vfc-client@300001a7
  WorldWidePortName: c050760941350104
 1.  202700a0b86e87a4,0                 107 GB Disk drive - bootable
 2.  202700a0b86e87a4,1000000000000     107 GB Disk drive
 3.  202700a0b86e87a4,2000000000000     107 GB Disk drive
 4.  202700a0b86e87a4,3000000000000     107 GB Disk drive
 5.  202700a0b86e87a4,4000000000000     107 GB Disk drive
 6.  202700a0b86e87a4,5000000000000     107 GB Disk drive
 7.  202700a0b86e87a4,6000000000000     107 GB Disk drive
 8.  202700a0b86e87a4,7000000000000     107 GB Disk drive
 9.  202700a0b86e87a4,8000000000000     107 GB Disk drive
10.  202700a0b86e87a4,9000000000000     107 GB Disk drive
11.  202700a0b86e87a4,a000000000000     107 GB Disk drive
12.  202700a0b86e87a4,b000000000000     107 GB Disk drive

At the end I can boot up the AIX machine back to normal.
First: what do you mean by "mapping"?? Do you mean "zoning"?

Second: which storage do you use?

Third: how is your system connected to the storage? I mean: physically connected. How does the FC cabling layout look like? I.e. are both ports on the physical adapters connected? And, if yes, do they work both?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phat
Code:
- 2 virtual FC fcs0, fcs2 comes from VIOS_A  --> mapped to the only 1 physical FC
- 2 virtual FC fcs1, fcs3  comes from VIOS_B  --> mapped to the only 1 physical FC

With the first action, the fcs2 & fcs3 were removed. We still have fcs0 & fcs1 (mapped to 2 different physical FCs) can see the LUN, but not see the bootable partition.

With the second action, fcs2 & fcs3 were re-added, this action makes fcs3 refreshed and see the LUN with bootable partition.

Why in the first action, the LUN & boot partition is not detected? we still have the full visibility to the LUN.
Why in the second action, we can see the LUN and boot partition?

As I know, FC card has 2 ports. if 1 port failed, the rest can continue to work. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
You are wrong: not wrong in that the card may have two ports but wrong in the assumption that if it has two ports both have to work. Maybe only one is connected, i don't know - but you don't know either, so i suggest you find out. See above - you (seem to) don't know some pretty relevant details about your environment.

Quote:
Here in reality, we have 2 physical FCs with 1 port failure per each, and still not boot the server until 1 port failure come up again.
This can have all sorts of reasons and then some: the zoning was wrong before and correct then, the zones where there but not correctly activated, there was a short outage of the FC connection - this happens frequently, which is why ones uses multipath drivers. (This is also the reason why i feel more comfortable not booting off a NPIV device.) And, and, ....

Sorry to have no better answer for you but you will have to learn how FC works, how zoning works, etc. - not to forget how IBM virtualisation works - to understand your environment. I am glad to explain some detail to you but i cannot teach you the job over the internet. And i am glad to help you but i cannot troubleshoot your system over the internet either.

I hope this helps.

bakunin
 

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