AIX

I am planning carving out dual VIO servers on a P750 based and would like to know how to allocate internal disks to the VIOS. This has 4 internal disks and I would to assign 2 disks to each VIO.

This is what I was thinking of assigning . Any advise?

vio1
U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C1 PCI-E x8 Ext Dual-x4 3Gb SAS Adapter 288 Unassigned Unassigned
U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C2 Ethernet controller 289 Unassigned Unassigned
U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C3 Fibre Channel Serial Bus 290 Unassigned Unassigned
U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C7 Fibre Channel Serial Bus 296 Unassigned Unassigned
U78A0.001.DNWKBTK-P1-C4 Ethernet controller 514 Unassigned Unassigned
U78A0.001.DNWKBTK-P1-T9 RAID Controller 512 Unassigned Unassigned

VIO2
U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C4 PCI-E x8 Ext Dual-x4 3Gb SAS Adapter 292 Unassigned Unassigned
U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C5 Fibre Channel Serial Bus 293 Unassigned Unassigned
U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C6 Fibre Channel Serial Bus 294 Unassigned Unassigned
U78A0.001.DNWKBTK-P1-C5 Ethernet controller 515 Unassigned Unassigned
U78A0.001.DNWKBTK-P1-C2 PCI-E x8 Ext Dual-x4 3Gb SAS Adapter 517 Unassigned Unassigned
U78A0.001.DNWKBTK-P1-C3 Ethernet controller 519 Unassigned Unassigned



========================================================

All I/O


U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C1 PCI-E x8 Ext Dual-x4 3Gb SAS Adapter 288 Unassigned Unassigned
U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C2 Ethernet controller 289 Unassigned Unassigned
U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C3 Fibre Channel Serial Bus 290 Unassigned Unassigned
U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C7 Fibre Channel Serial Bus 296 Unassigned Unassigned
U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C8 Empty slot 297 Unassigned Unassigned
U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C9 Empty slot 298 Unassigned Unassigned
U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C10 Empty slot 299 Unassigned Unassigned
U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C4 PCI-E x8 Ext Dual-x4 3Gb SAS Adapter 292 Unassigned Unassigned
U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C5 Fibre Channel Serial Bus 293 Unassigned Unassigned
U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C6 Fibre Channel Serial Bus 294 Unassigned Unassigned
U78A0.001.DNWKBTK-P1-T9 RAID Controller 512 Unassigned Unassigned
U78A0.001.DNWKBTK-P1-T3 Universal Serial Bus UHC Spec 513 Unassigned Unassigned
U78A0.001.DNWKBTK-P1-C4 Ethernet controller 514 Unassigned Unassigned
U78A0.001.DNWKBTK-P1-C5 Ethernet controller 515 Unassigned Unassigned
U78A0.001.DNWKBTK-P1-C1 Empty slot 516 Unassigned Unassigned
U78A0.001.DNWKBTK-P1-C2 PCI-E x8 Ext Dual-x4 3Gb SAS Adapter 517 Unassigned Unassigned
U78A0.001.DNWKBTK-P1-C10 Empty slot 518 Unassigned Unassigned
U78A0.001.DNWKBTK-P1-C3 Ethernet controller 519 Unassigned Unassigned

I don't see two RAID controllers in your configuration. Is the p750 suppose to come with two? The p740 comes with one in the P1-T9 and P1-C19. If you only have the one RAID controller on vio1 in P1-T9 and all 4 hdisks are attached to it, your vio2 server won't have any disks. You should probably check with your vendor about getting a second RAID controller ordered with it.

That was exactly my confusion to start with. On this P750, there are 3 SAS adapters and using the allocation as mentioned in the previous post, I was able to create 2 VIO partitions with 2 disks assigned to each VIO.

Disks are unique for each VIO. I have verified this. Just , I don't understand how is this working since RAID controller is assigned to 1 VIO.

Find the parent of hdisk0 on both of your vio servers and run a "lscfg -vl sas#" against both of them and that will tell you what slots the hdisks are connected to and you can see what is in those slots.... Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

Code:

vio1:/:# lsdev -l hdisk0 -F parent
sas0
vio1:/:# lscfg -vl sas0
  sas0             U78AA.001.XXXXXXX-P1-T9  Controller SAS Protocol

Code:

vio2:/:# lsdev -l hdisk0 -F parent
sas1
vio2:/:# lscfg -vl sas1
  sas1             U78AA.001.XXXXXXX-P1-C19-T1  Controller SAS Protocol

vio1 is getting it disks from the adapter in P1-T9. vio2 is getting its disks from the adapter in P1-C19-T1. Those are my RAID controllers.

Here's the output

VIO1

Code:

 
# lsdev -l hdisk0 -F parent
sas0
 
# lscfg -vp -l sas0
sas0 U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C1-T1 Controller SAS Protocol
PLATFORM SPECIFIC
Name: sas
Node: sas
Device Type: sas_ioa

VIO2

Code:

 
# lsdev -l hdisk0 -F parent
sas0
# lscfg -vp -l sas0
sas0 U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C4-T1 Controller SAS Protocol
PLATFORM SPECIFIC
Name: sas
Node: sas
Device Type: sas_ioa
#

That means your hdisks are connected to the P1-C1 and P1-C4 adapters:

Code:

U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C1 PCI-E x8 Ext Dual-x4 3Gb SAS Adapter 288 Unassigned Unassigned 
U5802.001.9K8H757-P1-C4 PCI-E x8 Ext Dual-x4 3Gb SAS Adapter 292 Unassigned Unassigned

I'm betting that your tape and/or DVD drive is connected to this RAID controller:

Code:

U78A0.001.DNWKBTK-P1-T9 RAID Controller 512 Unassigned Unassigned

For your own benefit, you can run those lsdev and lscfg commands against them and find out.

Yes, DVD is attached to the Raid controller. For installing the second VIO I had to move the Raid controller to the other LPAR to get the DVD rom moved over.

I guess I am confused about how the SAS adapter function is ? My understanding is that RAID controller controls or maintains parity for the i/O to the disk.

So, does this mean that if the RAID controller goes bad, will it affect all the disks.