IBM AIX Compatibility or Emulation

[Dmitry Polezhaev]

Greetings to everyone!

Does QUADStor planing to add IBM AIX compatibility into open or enterprise version? I mean the 'compatible' storage should be recognized and used in AIX Logical Volume Manager with multipathing support. Now the AIX compatibility matrix has a lot of storage systems from IBM/HP/Dell/Hitachi - but only Datacore SDS (Software Defined Storage) claimed the AIX compatibility. 

http://datacore.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1589

I tried to attach QUADStor VD to AIX via FC. Operating systems sees the 'device', but does not recognize it as 'usable' (while VMWare or Windows using the same VD without problems).

If You don't planing to extend the compatibility to 'exotic' OS-es, is it possible to give the QUADStor the ability to 'emulate' the storage by substituting Vendor ID string, WWN range and so on (or in the way of VTL product)? Is that possible with configuration files of actual QUADStor release?

Cheers!

[QUADStor Support]

A while back we were working on emulating disks from various vendors.
One use case for this was VAAI support for ESX 4.1 where vendor
specific plugins are required. But there isn't an urgency for this.

But the problem you are facing may not be the vendor identification
returned by the disk. We do not test with AIX but a quick search shows
IET works with AIX. Maybe the issue is FC related, so you could check
if the iSCSI path works. Also use a new vdisk rather an existing one
which may have partitions already created on it. And make sure that
the vdisk is only accessible by the AIX hba port (fcconfig rules)

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Documentation http://www.quadstor.com/storage-virtualization-documentation.html

[Dmitry Polezhaev]

A lot of thanks for the explanations!

I want to try the iSCSI connection as well as FC, and will write here the result in a couple of weeks.

[Dmitry Polezhaev]

On Monday, May 25, 2015 at 8:17:18 PM UTC+3, Dmitry Polezhaev wrote:

I want to try the iSCSI connection as well as FC, and will write here the result in a couple of weeks.

After a 2-year timeout and a number of version upgrades the FC appeared to work out of the box. iSCSI I will try later.

QuadStor, you are Wizards! 

root@tsm64 /home/root# cfgmgr
cfgmgr: 0514-621 WARNING: The following device packages are required for device support but are not currently installed.
devices.fcp.tm

root@tsm64 /home/root# lsdev | grep hdisk
hdisk0     Available             Virtual SCSI Disk Drive
hdisk1     Available             Virtual SCSI Disk Drive
hdisk2     Defined   00-00-01    Other FC SCSI Disk Drive
hdisk3     Available 00-00-01    Other FC SCSI Disk Drive
hdisk4     Defined   00-00-01    Other FC SCSI Disk Drive
hdisk5     Defined   00-00-01    Other FC SCSI Disk Drive
hdisk6     Available 00-00-01    Other FC SCSI Disk Drive
hdisk7     Available 00-00-01    MPIO Other FC SCSI Disk Drive

root@tsm64 /home/root# lscfg -vpl hdisk3 
  hdisk3           U78AB.001.WZSJKG9-P1-C4-T1-W210000E08B94F4DD-L2000000000000  Other FC SCSI Disk Drive 
        Manufacturer................QUADSTOR 
        Machine Type and Model......VDISK           
        ROS Level and ID............322E3000 
        Device Specific.(Z0)........000006121F080002 

root@tsm64 /home/root# lscfg -vpl hdisk6 
  hdisk6           U78AB.001.WZSJKG9-P1-C4-T1-W210000E08B94F4DD-L1000000000000  Other FC SCSI Disk Drive 
        Manufacturer................QUADSTOR 
        Machine Type and Model......VDISK           
        ROS Level and ID............322E3000 
        Device Specific.(Z0)........000006121F080002 

[lau excelcn]

I have take a test,the result is:

1.AIX can scan and identify the vdisk,whether by iSCSI or FC 

2.AIX can create pv on vdisk only if 512bytes is enabled.

3.AIX can not create VG because of IO failure,whether by iSCSI or FC.

    

Here is smit mkvg output:

 Before command completion, additional instructions may appear below.

0516-008 /usr/sbin/mkvg: LVM system call returned an unknown

        error code (-267).

0516-1184 /usr/sbin/mkvg: IO failure on hdisk2.

0516-862 /usr/sbin/mkvg: Unable to create volume group.

  

So,I think the root cause is relate to vdisk,not FC or iSCSI

在 2017年4月12日星期三 UTC+8下午6:08:27，Dmitry Polezhaev写道：

[Dmitry Polezhaev]

You are right, lau, in AIX the visibility of LUN and Physical Volume existence does not mean the Volume Group creation possibility. Our AIX Engineer came into the same issue. He also found the mapped LUNs (hdisk2,3,4) are not visible by the storage path manager:

root@tsm64 /home/root# lsdev | grep hdisk
hdisk0     Available             Virtual SCSI Disk Drive
hdisk1     Available             Virtual SCSI Disk Drive

hdisk2     Available 00-00-01    Other FC SCSI Disk Drive
hdisk3     Available 00-00-01    Other FC SCSI Disk Drive
hdisk7     Available 00-00-01    MPIO Other FC SCSI Disk Drive
hdisk4     Available 00-00-01    Other FC SCSI Disk Drive

root@tsm64 /home/root# lspath
Enabled hdisk0 vscsi0
Enabled hdisk1 vscsi0
Defined hdisk7 fscsi0
Defined hdisk7 fscsi0
Enabled hdisk7 fscsi0

As additional information: how the LUNs parameters are visible in AIX:

root@tsm64 /home/root# lsattr -El hdisk2
clr_q         no                 Device CLEARS its Queue on error True
location                         Location Label                   True
lun_id        0x1000000000000    Logical Unit Number ID           False
max_transfer  0x40000            Maximum TRANSFER Size            True
node_name     0x200000e08b94f4dd FC Node Name                     False
pvid          none               Physical volume identifier       False
q_err         yes                Use QERR bit                     True
q_type        simple             Queuing TYPE                     True
queue_depth   1                  Queue DEPTH                      True
reassign_to   120                REASSIGN time out value          True
rw_timeout    30                 READ/WRITE time out value        True
scsi_id       0xb0800            SCSI ID                          False
start_timeout 60                 START unit time out value        True
ww_name       0x210000e08b94f4dd FC World Wide Name               False

root@tsm64 /home/root# lsattr -El hdisk3
clr_q         no                 Device CLEARS its Queue on error True
location                         Location Label                   True
lun_id        0x2000000000000    Logical Unit Number ID           False
max_transfer  0x40000            Maximum TRANSFER Size            True
node_name     0x200000e08b94f4dd FC Node Name                     False
pvid          none               Physical volume identifier       False
q_err         yes                Use QERR bit                     True
q_type        simple             Queuing TYPE                     True
queue_depth   1                  Queue DEPTH                      True
reassign_to   120                REASSIGN time out value          True
rw_timeout    30                 READ/WRITE time out value        True
scsi_id       0xb0800            SCSI ID                          False
start_timeout 60                 START unit time out value        True
ww_name       0x210000e08b94f4dd FC World Wide Name               False

root@tsm64 /home/root# lsattr -El hdisk4
clr_q         no                 Device CLEARS its Queue on error True
location                         Location Label                   True
lun_id        0x3000000000000    Logical Unit Number ID           False
max_transfer  0x40000            Maximum TRANSFER Size            True
node_name     0x200000e08b94f4dd FC Node Name                     False
pvid          none               Physical volume identifier       False
q_err         yes                Use QERR bit                     True
q_type        simple             Queuing TYPE                     True
queue_depth   1                  Queue DEPTH                      True
reassign_to   120                REASSIGN time out value          True
rw_timeout    30                 READ/WRITE time out value        True
scsi_id       0xb0800            SCSI ID                          False
start_timeout 60                 START unit time out value        True
ww_name       0x210000e08b94f4dd FC World Wide Name               False

[QUADStor Support]

we would need more information than this

errpt sense information will be useful.

Also the new release now supports the following option in
/quadstor/etc/quadstor.conf
CmdDebug=1

This should print SCSI sense errors if any in the kernel logs
(/var/log/messages or /var/log/kern.log) along with the CDB and
parameter data information

[lau excelcn]

Please see the attached file.

在 2017年4月30日星期日 UTC+8下午7:27:48，quadstor写道：