Hosting IBMi on i and PowerHA

Does anyone have any experience with IBMi on i , as described below, in a PowerHA environment?

Specifically I'm wondering how the failing over of a virtual IBMi partition to another physical server might work and if it would carry *SYSBAS as well as iASP storage with it ????

My thoughts are that the Network Storage Object associated with the IBMi on i virtual partition could be stored in an iASP. That iASP could be swapped from one hardware server to another hardware server and then the virtual partition could be restarted on the 2nd (HA) server. The intent of doing it this way is that ALL the data associated with the virtual partition could be mirrored to the other server using Geographic Mirroring, Metro Mirror or Global Mirror...


1.1 IBM i logical partition (LPAR) hosting another IBM i partition

An IBM i 6.1/7.1 LPAR can host one or more additional IBM i LPARs, known as virtual client LPARs. Virtual client partitions typically have no physical I/O hardware assigned and instead leverage virtual I/O resources from the host IBM i partition. The types of hardware resources that can be virtualized by the host LPAR are disk, tape, optical and networking. The capability of IBM i to provide virtual I/O resources has been used successfully for several years to integrate AIX(r), Linux(r) and Microsoft(r) Windows(r) workloads on the same platform. The same virtualization technology, which is part of the IBM i operating system, can now be used to host IBM i LPARs. IBM i hosting IBM i is the focus of the first half of this paper.

1.2 IBM i using open storage as a client of the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS)
IBM i virtual client partitions can also be hosted by VIOS. VIOS is virtualization software that runs in a separate partition with the purpose to provide virtual storage, optical, tape and networking resources to one or more client partitions. The most immediate benefit that VIOS brings to an IBM i client partition is the ability to expand its storage portfolio to use 512-byte/sector open storage. Open storage volumes (or logical units, LUNs) are physically attached to VIOS through a FC or a Serial-attached SCSI (SAS) connection and then made available to IBM i. While IBM i does not directly attach to the storage area network (SAN) in this case, as soon as open storage LUNs become available through VIOS, they are managed the same way as integrated disks or LUNs from a directly attached storage system. IBM i using open storage through VIOS is the focus of the second half of this read-me first guide.

Kenneth
Kenneth E. Graap
NW Natural
System Administrator for IBM Power Systems
503.226.4211 x5537
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kennethgraap