Re: With SAN should you still use internal disk for vios?

With NVMe drives you might be able to cheat a little since you will have
two of them anyway and they mirror each other but the problem is VIOS wants
to own all the hardware. As Larry pointed out, slot space is precious so
needing those extra controllers winds up being a waste of slot space in my
opinion.

Again all three of us that responded to this agreed that it is 1)
preference, and 2) we prefer SAN boot.

Yes, I've seen SANs go down. (just had one two months ago) But if the
SAN goes down, the partitions that rely on that storage go down too, so
where's the savings? In the case of the failure I ran into once we get the
SAN back up and running, IBM i just connected and took off on its merry way
without dropping a beat. (and it was three days to get the SAN repaired
due to parts spread all over the US)

--
Jim Oberholtzer
Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects


On Mon, Aug 22, 2022 at 8:27 AM Rob Berendt <rob@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Of course with two VIOS lpars (for redundancy) and each running mirrored
drives you end up with 4 NVMe drives. Just to run VIOS.

How much time does it save you to be able to get VIOS running while you
are waiting on SAN? At best it probably keeps you from breathing down the
storage guy's neck while you are waiting.

Has anyone on this list actually been in this situation where the SAN went
casters up?

I suppose having some device which could 'ping' FC might tell you that
it's the switch vs the SAN.


Rob Berendt
--
IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM i 6.1
Group Dekko
Dept 1600
Mail to: 7310 Innovation Blvd, Suite 104
Ft. Wayne, IN 46818
Ship to: 7310 Innovation Blvd, Dock 9C
Ft. Wayne, IN 46818
http://www.dekko.com

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My take on that is it's personal preference. I prefer SAN boot VIOS, but
that makes the initial installation and build a bit more difficult, then
again it's easy to replicate those LUNs to the DR box. The other down side
is if there is a failure you must have the SAN and fibre network all up and
running before you can start the POWER system. Some might not find that as
useful as it could be.

With internal storage for VIOS you have the additional cost of the DASD
controller which by definition must split the backplane and of course the
storage. On the up side it's easier to install etc.

In the end does it matter, not really.

--
Jim Oberholtzer
Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects


On Mon, Aug 22, 2022 at 6:40 AM Rob Berendt <rob@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

IDK if I already asked this question but: With SAN should you still use
internal disk for vios?

The winds of change are coming. When replacing our 9009-42A and our
8286-41A (same rack) we may go with SAN.

BP is pushing for internal disk to continue to host VIOS. With all the
nightmares I had getting disk replaced for VIOS I find this rather
disconcerting. Why would I get this recommendation?

DSPASPBRM
9009
--Auxiliary storage pools-- Over- ----- ASP Media -----
Name Number Type flow Mirror Size Avail %Used
*SYSTEM 00001 *SYSBAS No No 25605 G 4053 G 84.1

8286
--Auxiliary storage pools-- Over- ----- ASP Media -----
Name Number Type flow Mirror Size Avail %Used
*SYSTEM 00001 *SYSBAS No No 5957 G 4202 G 29.4
*NONE 00002 *SYSBAS No No 6919 G 1778 G 74.3



Related thread from earlier this year:
https://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/202205/msg00262.html


Rob Berendt
--
IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM i 6.1
Group Dekko
Dept 1600
Mail to: 7310 Innovation Blvd, Suite 104
Ft. Wayne, IN 46818
Ship to: 7310 Innovation Blvd, Dock 9C
Ft. Wayne, IN 46818
http://www.dekko.com

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