Mt Xia: Technical Consulting Group

Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery / High Availability
Data Center Automation / Audit Response / Audit Compliance

Additional documents of interest

  • Successful Business Continuity - Part 1 - Users and Groups
    This article was published in the April 2005 issue of AIX Update magazine and discusses system administration needs and requirements oriented around users and groups. The overall emphasis of this series of articles is for implementation of enterprise wide unique identifiers for a variety of parameters, such as user names, group names, UID and GID numbers.

  • Successful Business Continuity - Part 2 - Machine and Host Names
    This article was published in the May 2005 issue of AIX Update magazine and discusses naming structures for machines, systems, adapters, and aliases. The overall emphasis of this series of articles is for implementation of enterprise wide unique identifiers for a variety of parameters.

  • Successful Business Continuity - Part 3 - Volume Names
    This article was published in the December 2005 issue of AIX Update magazine and discusses naming structures for volume groups, logical volumes, log logical volumes, directory mount points, etc. The overall emphasis of this series of articles is for implementation of enterprise wide unique identifiers for a variety of parameters.

  • Successful Business Continuity - Part 4 - MQ Series, Startup/Shutdown Scripts, Error Processing
    This article was published in the April 2006 issue of AIX Update magazine and discusses how to implement AIX in an environment dedicated to business continuity. The topic of this article is the assignment of MQ Series queue names and aliases, resource group startup and shutdown script names (Application startup/shutdown script names), error logging, and error notification.

  • Successful Business Continuity - Part 5 - Miscellaneous topics
    This article was published in the August 2006 issue of AIX Update magazine and discusses how to implement AIX in an environment dedicated to business continuity. A variety of topics is discussed in this article including automated documentation generation and management.

  • Automated Microcode Management System
    One of the most difficult administration tasks in an AIX environment is attempting to keep the firmware and microcode up-to-date. Mt Xia has devised an automated method of gathering the Microcode information, determining which microcode needs to be updated, generating reports, and uploading the required microcode updates to each individual system.

  • Calculating the size of a Virtual Processor
    This document describes the algorithms used to calculate the size of a virtual processor when using shared processors in an LPAR. The IBM documentation describes how to calculate CPU utilization, NOT how to size for configuration, this document clarifies this process. A description of the HMC input fields for the processor tab is included.

  • Basics of Partition Load Manager Setup
    This presentation was provided by Ron Barker from IBM regarding the PLM Basic setup.
  • ppt
  • pdf

    • Configuration of the virtual I/O adapters requires the knowledge of disk layouts as well as networking configuration. The virtual SCSI adapters require server and client side adapters to be configured on the HMC. The server side portion of the SCSI adapter, configured on the VIO, requires a frame wide unique "slot number" be defined. For high availability a server side portion of the SCSI adapter must be configured for each VIO server. This means that each virtual disk or logical volume connection is associated with two server side SCSI adapters, one on each VIO server. By convention the standard has become that each SCSI adapter is numbered as a multiple of 10, with the first SCSI adapter of the server side high availability pair being configured on the first VIO server and ending with the number 0, i.e., 210, 220, 230, 240, ... The second SCSI adapter of the server side high availability pair is configured on the second VIO server and ends with the number 5, i.e., 215, 225, 235, 245, ...

    For each LPAR that uses virtual disk or logical volumes, a client side virtual SCSI adapter must be configured on the HMC. The client side of the virtual SCSI adapter requires additional information and it's settings to correspond with the server side of the SCSI adapter. Coordination of the slot numbers defined here will make debugging and tracking of problems much easier and is highly desired. The information required to configure a client side SCSI adapter includes slot number, the name of the server side SCSI adapter remote partition, and the slot number of the server side SCSI adapter on the remote partition. The client side slot number should correspond with the server side slot number to make debugging and tracking easier. As an example of defining both server and client side SCSI adapters in a high availability environment:

    For each LPAR, a pair of virtual SCSI adapters shall be configured to be used for attachment of the operating system and paging disks. Another pair of virtual SCSI adapters shall be configured for the purpose of application disk attachment. The virtual SCSI adapters designated for use as operating system disk attachment shall be numbered between 10 and 199. The virtual SCSI adapters designated for use as application disk attachment shall be numbered between 200 and 499.

    Using this standard, each VIO server will have one virtual SCSI adapter per LPAR for the operating system, and one virtual SCSI adapter per LPAR for the application storage. Each LPAR will reference two virtual SCSI adapters, one from each VIO server, for the operating system storage, and two virtual SCSI adapters, one from each VIO server, for the application storage. Examples of this is shown below.

    Example Virtual SCSI Slot Numbers
    LPAR VIO 0
    OS Slot    		 VIO 1
    OS Slot    		 VIO 0
    Appl Slot    		 VIO 1
    Appl Slot
    daladcal01 10 15 200 205
    daladfim03 20 25 210 215
    daladesp01 30 35 220 225
    dalapega01 40 45 230 235
    dalaaora02 50 55 240 245

    Each virtual SCSI adapter may have one or more disks with it, depending upon the LPAR requirements. These disk associations are performed on the VIO server by referencing the slot numbers assigned to each LPAR.

    This virtual SCSI adapter information can be automatically gathered from an existing frame through the HMC using the script "virtualscsi.ksh. Example output from this script follows:

    Server9119590SN51A432B

    Adapter Type Slot Remote LPAR Remote Slot Backing Device LPAR Name
    server 100 any 0x8100000000000000//ap01rootlv dalapvio01
    server 110 any 0x8100000000000000//ap02rootlv dalapvio01
    server 120 any 0x8100000000000000//ap03rootlv dalapvio01
    server 130 any 0x8100000000000000//db01rootlv dalapvio01
    server 150 any 0x8100000000000000/U5791.001.91800WT-P1-C06-T1-W50060E8003334713-L1000000000000/hdisk5 dalapvio01
    server 160 any 0x8100000000000000/U5791.001.91800WT-P1-C06-T1-W50060E8003334713-L2000000000000/hdisk6 dalapvio01
    server 170 any 0x8100000000000000/U5791.001.91800WT-P1-C06-T1-W50060E8003334713-L3000000000000/hdisk7 dalapvio01
    client 190 dalapvio01 190 none dalpocdb01
    server 30 any 0x8100000000000000//pocap01lv dalapvio01
    server 40 any 0x8100000000000000//pocap02lv dalapvio01
    server 50 any 0x8100000000000000//pocap03lv dalapvio01
    server 60 any 0x8100000000000000//pocdb01lv dalapvio01
    server 105 any // dalapvio02
    server 115 any // dalapvio02
    server 125 any // dalapvio02
    server 135 any // dalapvio02
    server 155 any 0x8100000000000000/U5791.001.91800WW-P1-C06-T1-W50060E8003334703-L1000000000000/hdisk5 dalapvio02
    server 165 any 0x8100000000000000/U5791.001.91800WW-P1-C06-T1-W50060E8003334703-L2000000000000/hdisk6 dalapvio02
    server 175 any 0x8100000000000000/U5791.001.91800WW-P1-C06-T1-W50060E8003334703-L3000000000000/hdisk7 dalapvio02
    client 195 dalapvio02 195 none dalpocdb01
    server 35 any 0x8100000000000000//pocap01lv dalapvio02
    server 45 any 0x8100000000000000//pocap02lv dalapvio02
    server 55 any 0x8100000000000000//pocap03lv dalapvio02
    server 65 any 0x8100000000000000//pocdb01lv dalapvio02
    client 2 dalapvio01 60 none dalpocdb01
    client 3 dalapvio02 65 none dalpocdb01
    client 4 dalapvio01 130 none dalpocdb01
    client 5 dalapvio01 170 none dalpocap03
    client 6 dalapvio02 175 none dalpocap03
    client 2 dalapvio01 60 none dalpocdb01
    client 3 dalapvio02 65 none dalpocdb01
    client 4 dalapvio01 130 none dalpocdb01
    client 5 dalapvio01 170 none dalpocap03
    client 6 dalapvio02 175 none dalpocap03
    client 2 dalapvio01 60 none dalpocdb01
    client 3 dalapvio02 65 none dalpocdb01
    client 4 dalapvio01 130 none dalpocdb01
    client 5 dalapvio01 170 none dalpocap03
    client 6 dalapvio02 175 none dalpocap03
    client 190 dalapvio01 190 none dalpocdb01
    client 195 dalapvio02 195 none dalpocdb01
    client 2 dalapvio01 60 none dalpocdb01
    client 3 dalapvio02 65 none dalpocdb01
    client 4 dalapvio01 130 none dalpocdb01

    Server9119590SN51A432C

    Adapter Type Slot Remote LPAR Remote Slot Backing Device LPAR Name
    server 140 any 0x8100000000000000//s32Cplmrootlv dalapvio03
    server 145 any 0x8100000000000000//i32Cplmrootlv dalapvio04
    server 130 any 0x8100000000000000//sdb02rootlv dalapvio03
    server 140 any 0x8100000000000000//s32Cplmrootlv dalapvio03
    client 190 dalapvio03 190 none dalpocdb02
    server 145 any 0x8100000000000000//i32Cplmrootlv dalapvio04
    client 195 dalapvio04 195 none dalpocdb02
    server 65 any 0x8100000000000000//db02rootlv dalapvio04
    client 190 dalapvio03 190 none dalpocdb02
    client 195 dalapvio04 195 none dalpocdb02
    client 2 dalapvio04 65 none dalpocdb02
    client 3 dalapvio03 130 none dalpocdb02

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    VIO SCSI ID
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