Re: Fibre Channel Tape Sharing on Guest Partition

Here is the difference between VIOS Support and IBM i support of V7000 and V3700.

VIOS 8G speed
NPIV
Fiber switch between SAN and Power System.
Multiple partitions on one path with virtualization
Excellent for multiple partitions.
Required for mobility, hibernate, etc.

IBM i 4G speed (8G adapters not allowed)
No NPIV
Direct attach, no switch
One partition on the path
Possibly acceptable to have 1 or 2 small guest partitions (e.g. Development) but not production guest partitions. All disk is intended for just one partition.
No support for advanced virtualization such as mobility etc.

In either case IBM I is doing the 512 to 520 byte sector magic as the SAN is 512 bytes.

DrFranken

Sent from my iPad

On Nov 21, 2013, at 11:50 PM, PaulMmn <PaulMmn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

*This message was transferred with a trial version of CommuniGate(r) Pro*
Larry--

I am under the impression that the latest technical PTF/Release will allow the iSeries to talk directly to a V7000 SAN, adjusting for the difference between the iSeries' disk sector size and everyone else's. This will allow the iSeries to exist without a VIOS for disk access.

Does this also include 'fixing' vSCSI and NPIV and giving the iSeries all the benefits of a VIOS interceding with the world without the need of an actual VIOS? And thus allow virtual sharing of a fiber attachment?

--Paul E Musselman
PaulMmn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
.
.


At 11:40 PM -0500 11/21/13, DrFranken wrote:

If you have VIOS in the mix you can virtualize like crazy. Both tap and
disk. I just finished a major install with Pete that's all Fiber Channel
storage through SAN Switches and VIO to V3700. Once a few bits are set
up in VIOS you simply create storage on the SAN and attach it to
whichever partition that needs it. Shazam more disk. Tape is the same.

Since VIOS is needed for other advanced functions as well such as
mobility, memory sharing and more, it makes sense that VIOS would bring
all that support first.

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com
www.iInTheCloud.com

On 11/21/2013 12:29 PM, Paul Raulerson wrote:
Slightly OT, but I wonder if anyone knows why Fibre Channel support is so difficult to virtualize? Just in general terms.

Fibre connected SAN storage is a huge benefit to most business configurations.

Even a tiny system like a DS3500 can support the i - rather the DS3500 supports IBM VIOS 2.1.3 wit h IBM i 6.1 or later. And it can support flash copy and other. (Okay, for comparison, you can can configure 18TB of raw storage (i.e. about 13TB in RAID 5) for about $16K. That's significant change, but how much would it cost to put that much storage directly on an i?

Or are there just better solutions than I, being way out of date, am unaware of?

Anyways, it would seem that fibre connections would be one of the first things virtualized, but it usually seems to be one of the last. Judging by "i" and VMWare. The zSeries machines can all virtualize fibre connections (FICON and FibreChannel) without breaking a sweat, but then, those machines do not have any internal DASD options. :)

-Paul

--
This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing list
To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l
or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.