Solid State Drives (SSD)
A Solid State Drive (SSD) is like a hard disk drive but with no moving parts - the data is saved in computer flash memory chips rather than on a rotating magnetised metal disk.
Good Introductory Whitepaper for Solid State Drives with AIX based Systems - Driving Business Value on Power Systems With Solid State Drives
Similar Whitepaper for IBM i - Performance Value of Solid State Drives using IBM i
A New Era in Enterprise Computing without spinning brown stuff
Solid State Drives (SSD) are a really cool no moving parts replacement for "disks" based on flash memory chips:
- The good news is they are fast, like 200 to 300 times faster than a hard disk drive (HHD) at random I/O and 4KB block size
- The bad news is that they are currently smallish (69 GB) and fairly expensive - this is the first generation so expect this to improve
- A good use of this technology is a hybrid of Solid State Drives for hot data (meaning under heavy I/O rates) and hard disk drives for cooler data that is less actively used.
PC Level Technology
You probably have a PC Pen drive, Thumb drive, Flash drive, Memory key, ... or whatever you call it.
- Behaves like a disk with no moving parts, small, quiet and cool.
- I have a see through 16 GB one that has just three chips inside (one of them is probably for the USB interface)
But note:
- typically only used a few times a day
- Fairly slow due to USB - you will notice this particularly if you try to copy a 1 GB file to or from the device - it can take minutes.
- Finite number of writes (in the thousands) then you are likely to hit "memory cell" failures but with a few writes a day it will last many years.
Enterprise Solid State Drive
| Advanced Features |
Comments |
| Heavy duty cycle |
Sustained I/O all day and night (24 x 7) for many years |
| SAS disk interface = 3 GB/s |
Appears as a disk with a high performance interface |
| Deliberately evens the load across chips |
Every time a file or blocks of a file are stored they are placed in different memory cells to ensure that some cells are not over worked and wear out |
| Optimising by defragmentation? |
Never Defrag an SSD as writing the same file twice means it "lands" on a different place every time so a defrag achieve nothing. As all memory cells are accessible at the same speed, a defrag will not speed up the drive anyway |
| Pro-active checking removes suspect "cells" |
Ensures no data loss |
| 69 GB data storage (internal 128 GB) |
85% Redundancy for maximum life time even with heavy use |
| Many chips for faster parallel access |
Faster random I/O |
Some Performance Numbers
At 4 KB random I/O
- Hard Disk Drive (HDD) between ~120 to 200 I/O per second (IOPS)
- Solid State Drive (SSD) is 28,000 I/O per second (that is no typo - that really is twenty eight thousand)
- I hit this on the second attempt with a simple test tool (ndisk64 from the nstress tools) so, it does not take endless tests and clever applications to hit this number.
- Others testing these devices have reported higher numbers than the officially claimed ones
For an Enterprise SAN disk subsystem like the IBM DS4700 to hit 135K IOPS takes 7.7K Watts for the disks and controllers
To hit this you need five SSDs and they are around 330 Watts. Let's be careful here as the DS4700 has first a few TBs of disk space in this comparison and the SSD space is limited and the DS4700 has advantages in superior functions and disaster recovery. The point is the SSD technology does not need a lot of electricity and this is a double win as it runs cool.
Performance Throughput Sustained:
- 220 MB/s Read
- 122 MB/s Write
Random transactional operations (IOPS): 28,000 IOPS
- Average Access time: 20 - 120 microseconds
- Power Consumption: < half of a 15K hard disk
Form Factors and Packaging
The same SSD is is available in the following packages:
- a SAS drive for the JS23 and JS43 Blades
- in a 2.5 inch caddy to go in the new in May 2009 p520 and p550 internal I/O bays (this has 8 drives instead of the previous 6)
- in a 3.5 inch caddy to go in the p560 and p570 internal I/O bays
- in a 3.5 inch caddy to go in the EXP 12S SAS I/O Drawer (FC#5886) - actually the same caddy as above.
- As all POWER6 machines can include one of the SAS adapters, all machines in the range make use of SSD technology
There are placement rules that can catch you out and put you in "may work but is unsupported" hell:
- You can't mix hard disks and SSDs in the same bays or subsystem
- You can only place up to 8 SSDs in the EXP12S SAS expansion Drawer
- You must format to 69GB using 528 byte sectors (not 512 byte sectors to get 74 GB)
- You can't mix SSD and hard disks in a mirror (i.e. one technology or the other)
- There may be other rules too but these are the ones I noticed - check the "secret" documentation links below.
If you are using SAS Drawers there are a number of SAS PCI-X and PCI-e adapter options. Some have medium and large caches that can further boost performance. However, the SSD is extremely fast and in some cases switching off the cache can let you run faster. Also, you need to think about the SAS band-width of 3 GB/s - again a high number of SSDs can saturate the SAS bus.
In pictures
This is my first SSD being taken apart - do not do this at home kids!
Hard to Find Documentation
Good Introductory Whitepaper for Solid State Drives with AIX based Systems - Driving Business Value on Power Systems With Solid State Drives
These documents are very well hidden in the IBM Information Centre (you have to start at the Systems Hardware Information sub page and search from there to find them):
- Installing and configuring Solid State Drives
- Actually this document is mostly about the configurations that are allowed, the SAS drawer, SAS adapters and SAS controllers.
It covers AIX, Linux and IBM i operating systems. It is not very clear that the POWER6 p595 can have SSD disks via a PCI-X or PIC-e (depending on p595 remote I/O drawer) SAS adapter to the SAS I/O Drawer (fc#5886).
- Considerations for Solid-State Drives
- This is about RAID levels and controlling SAS adapter caches.
Unfortunately, this does not actually cover how to get them working! See below for my notes on this.
There is now an SSD Introduction and Installation Movie Setting up an SSD on AIX Movie (23 minutes, .wmv format) from the AIX Movie website
Hard to Find Prerequisite
Summary from the IBM Prerequisite website
You have to know the Solid State Drive is Feature code 3586 - then you can look it up.
For your convenience, I have copied it here. Warning: this could be out of date by the time you read it!
| Server firmware |
FW3.4.2 |
EA340_075, EL340_075 , EM340_075, ES340_075, EH340_075 |
| HMC firmware |
V7R3.4.0 Service Pack 2 |
MH01162 |
| Power subsystem Firmware |
V3.4.2 |
EB340_078, EPB340_078 |
| AIX 5L Version 5.3 |
5300-10 |
| AIX 5L Version 5.3 |
5300-09 |
SP4 |
| AIX 5L Version 5.3 |
5300-08 |
SP7 |
| AIX 5L Version 5.3 |
5300-07 |
SP9 |
| AIX Version 6.1 |
6100-03 |
| AIX Version 6.1 |
6100-02 |
SP4 |
| AIX Version 6.1 |
6100-01 |
SP5 |
| AIX Version 6.1 |
6100 |
SP9 |
| SLES |
10 SP2 |
| RHEL |
4.7 |
| RHEL |
5.2 |
Getting your Solid State Drives Online to AIX
This section is from my personal experience, there may be other ways to do this.
I assumed the SSD would work like a hard disk:
- Push the SSD into the internal disk bay or a disk slot an the SAS I/O Drawer
- Run cfgmgr to spot the new disk,
- Use lspv (list physical volumes (disks)) and it would show you the new hdisk
- Use smitty or mkvg, mklv, mkfs to create a file systems then mount it and use the SSD.
I was very wrong! What really worries me is that when I couldn't find the hdisk I assumed the SSD was "dead on arrival" (DOA).
If you are familiar with the old SSA disks then you will understand about pdisk and that they need a little preparation before being used - similar tools are used for SSDs. I have done this with the internal 3.5 inch disk bays of a p570 connected to the internal simple non-cache controller and the external ESP 12S SAS I/O drawer connected via a SAS adapter with cache - the process is identical.
Part 1 - Inserting the SSD
- Push the SSD into the disk bay
- Make sure the SAS controller (with its attached disks) is in the LPAR - either the internal controller or the SAS adapter
- In my p570 machine it is listed in the I/O slots Properties on the HMC as
- U789D.001.DQDVXVP-P1-T3 SAS Non-Raid Adapter
- Either dynamically add it or change the LPAR profile and hard stop and reboot the LPAR.
- Run: cfgmgr
- Check with: lspv
- It will not show the SSD yet but make a note of the disks you already have, so you notice when you have the SSD online
- Check for a pdisk with: lsdev -Cc pdisk
- I got a line like this:
pdisk0 Available 00-00-00 Physical SAS Disk Drive
- So the SSD is completely invisible as an hdisk but at least we can see the pdisk(s) that need configuring.
Part 2 - Finding and starting the SAS Disk Manager
You need to run the IBM SAS Disk Array Manager. This is available in at least three ways:
- Run smitty and take the following options
- Devices
- Disk Array
- SAS Disk Array
- SAS Disk Array Manager
- Run smitty "sas_ary_mgr_menu
You should get to the following screen
IBM SAS Disk Array Manager
Move cursor to desired item and press Enter.
List SAS Disk Array Configuration
Create an Array Candidate pdisk and Format to 528 Byte Sectors
Create a SAS Disk Array
Delete a SAS Disk Array
Add Disks to an Existing SAS Disk Array
Migrate an Existing SAS Disk Array to a New RAID Level
Configure a Defined SAS Disk Array
Change/Show Characteristics of a SAS Disk Array
Manage HA Access Characteristics of a SAS Disk Array
Reconstruct a SAS Disk Array
Change/Show SAS pdisk Status
Diagnostics and Recovery Options
- Run: diag
- Note: The diag command is a way into the hardware diagnostics functions that are typically used by hardware engineers to find problems with machines. Particularly, machines that fail to get as far as a running the operating system - typically a memory, boot disk or adapter problem.
- Hit Enter to get to the real diag menu
- Arrow down to "Task Selection" and hit Enter
- Arrow down to "Hot Plug Task" and hit Enter
- Arrow down to "SCSI and SCSI RAID Hot Plug Manager" and hit Enter
- Arrow down to "Identify a Device Attached to a SCSI Hot Swap Enclosure Device" and hit Enter
- Select a particular pdisk, in this case I only have pdisk0, and hit Enter. The LED (Orange) on the SSD device will start flashing. This allows you to identify which SSD device is which pdisk.
- Use F3 or Escape 3 untill you return to the "Task Selection" menu
- Arrow down to the bottom. One from the bottom is RAID Array Manager - select it
- Oddly, in my HMC console for the LPAR, the first item on the list of three is missing. So, Arrow down and up and it appears. Some one really does not want us to get these SSDs online!!
- You should now see "IBM SAS Disk Array Manager" - select it
- If you only have Solid State Disks in your machine or LPAR then you can't install AIX until the SSDs are configured and so you can't get to diag's like this nor run smitty - this is a Catch-22 problem. Fortunately, you can boot the Diag CDROM and access the diag commends from there. Once you have the SSD(s) formated you can then reboot, find the hdisk(s) and install AIX or Linux.
Part 3 - Configuring the SSD ready for the operating system
Regardless of the way you got to the SAS Disk Manager, the menus then look the same
- Select "List SAS Disk Array Configuration", then select the SAS adapter:
IBM SAS Disk Array Manager
Move cursor to desired item and press Enter.
List SAS Disk Array Configuration <---
Create an Array Candidate pdisk and Format to 528 Byte Sectors
Create a SAS Disk Array
Delete a SAS Disk Array
Add Disks to an Existing SAS Disk Array
Migrate an Existing SAS Disk Array to a New RAID Level
Configure a Defined SAS Disk Array
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Available Controllers |
| |
| Move cursor to desired item and press F7. |
| ONE OR MORE items can be selected. |
| Press Enter AFTER making all selections. |
| |
| sissas0 Available 00-00 PCI Express x8 Ext Dual-x4 3Gb SAS Adapter |
| |
| F1=Help F2=Refresh F3=Cancel |
| F7=Select F8=Image F10=Exit |
F1| Enter=Do /=Find n=Find Next |
F9+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
- In my setup I have the below output for my single SSD
,
COMMAND STATUS
Command: OK stdout: yes stderr: no
Before command completion, additional instructions may appear below.
[TOP]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name Resource State Description Size
------------------------------------------------------------------------
sissas0 FFFFFFFF Primary PCI Express x8 Ext Dual-x4 3Gb SAS Adapter
pdisk0 00040B00 Active Array Candidate 69.7GB
hdisk1 00040000 Available SAS Disk Drive 146.8GB
hdisk2 00040100 Available SAS Disk Drive 146.8GB
hdisk3 00040300 Available SAS Disk Drive 146.8GB
hdisk4 00040400 Available SAS Disk Drive 146.8GB
hdisk5 00040500 Available SAS Disk Drive 146.8GB
[MORE...4]
- Note: I have SAS Hard Disk Drives and Solid State Disk Drives in the same set of disk bays - This is not currently supported (May 2009).
- Note: in my test system I do not have the hard disk drives online but I am told by others this would probably work but it is still not supported. You have been warned.
- Go back to the Menu with F3 or Escape 3
- Arrow down to "Create an Array Candidate pdisk and format to 528 Byte Sectors" - select it.
- Warning: you might notice on lower menu pages, the option to format with 512 bytes sectors which gets you 74GBs of disk space. While this works (I tried it), it is not currently supported (May 2009) by IBM, so if you later have problems IBM Support will instruct you to reformat the drive as the first step of problem diagnoses and you will lose all your data. You have been warned!
- Select the SAS Adapter you have the SSD attached to, or if you are unsure, try each in turn - mine says for the internal p570 controller "sissas0 Available 01-08 PCI-X266 Planar 3 GB SAS Adapter". If you are using a plug-in adapter then this would read differently.
- You should see a list of hard disks (if you have any attached to the controller/adapter) and the SSD pdisk.
- If you have many SSD devices then you may have trouble identifying which SSD is which, so use the earlier mechanism to identify them.
- For the internal to a machine disk bays - these are numbers as they are for hard disk drives.
- For the EXP 12S SAS I/O Drawers as far as I can determine they are numbers as (looking from the front):
000 100 200 300
400 500 600 700
800 900 A00 B00
- So the details in the above pdisk example is Resource 00040B00 which is the bottom right disk slot (B00).
- I just created a single candidate disk (I only have one SSD in the machine at the moment) but if you have many, then format them all by selecting them with F7 and hitting Enter.
IBM SAS Disk Array Manager
Move cursor to desired item and press Enter.
List SAS Disk Array Configuration
Create an Array Candidate pdisk and Format to 528 Byte Sectors <-----
Create a SAS Disk Array
Delete a SAS Disk Array
Add Disks to an Existing SAS Disk Array
Migrate an Existing SAS Disk Array to a New RAID Level
Configure a Defined SAS Disk Array
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Available Controllers |
| |
| Move cursor to desired item and press F7. |
| ONE OR MORE items can be selected. |
| Press Enter AFTER making all selections. |
| |
| sissas0 Available 00-00 PCI Express x8 Ext Dual-x4 3Gb SAS Adapter |
| |
| F1=Help F2=Refresh F3=Cancel |
| F7=Select F8=Image F10=Exit |
F1| Enter=Do /=Find n=Find Next |
F9+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
- Select the drives with F7 or Escape 7 - just the one in this case. See the ">" next to the pdisk.
IBM SAS Disk Array Manager
Move cursor to desired item and press Enter.
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Create an Array Candidate pdisk and Format to 528 Byte Sectors |
| |
| Move cursor to desired item and press F7. Use arrow keys to scroll. |
| ONE OR MORE items can be selected. |
| Press Enter AFTER making all selections. |
| |
| > pdisk0 00040B00 Active Array Candidate 69.7GB |
| hdisk1 00040000 Available SAS Disk Drive 146.8GB |
| hdisk2 00040100 Available SAS Disk Drive 146.8GB |
| hdisk3 00040300 Available SAS Disk Drive 146.8GB |
| hdisk4 00040400 Available SAS Disk Drive 146.8GB |
| hdisk5 00040500 Available SAS Disk Drive 146.8GB |
| hdisk6 00040700 Available SAS Disk Drive 146.8GB |
| hdisk7 00040200 Available SAS Disk Drive 146.8GB |
| hdisk8 00040600 Available SAS Disk Drive 146.8GB |
| |
| F1=Help F2=Refresh F3=Cancel |
| F7=Select F8=Image F10=Exit |
F1| Enter=Do /=Find n=Find Next |
F9+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
- Confirm the reformat of the drive warning as it will destroy all data forever.
- Note: You will see how fast the disks are because this took for me just 16 seconds - the old SSA disks took many minutes.
- If you take the "List SAS Disk Array Configuration" option again you will see the SSD is now reported as
pdisk0 00040B00 Active Array Candidate 69.7GB Zeroed
- Now return to the "IBM SAS Disk Array Manager" menu and select "Create a SAS Disk Array"
- Again select the controller/adapter
- Note: you can only create an array with disks on a single adapter (not across adapters)
IBM SAS Disk Array Manager
Move cursor to desired item and press Enter.
List SAS Disk Array Configuration
Create an Array Candidate pdisk and Format to 528 Byte Sectors
Create a SAS Disk Array
Delete a SAS Disk Array
Add Disks to an Existing SAS Disk Array
Migrate an Existing SAS Disk Array to a New RAID Level
Configure a Defined SAS Disk Array
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Available Controllers |
| |
| Move cursor to desired item and press F7. |
| ONE OR MORE items can be selected. |
| Press Enter AFTER making all selections. |
| |
| sissas0 Available 00-00 PCI Express x8 Ext Dual-x4 3Gb SAS Adapter |
| |
| F1=Help F2=Refresh F3=Cancel |
| F7=Select F8=Image F10=Exit |
F1| Enter=Do /=Find n=Find Next |
F9+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
- Select the RAID level, you want:
- 0=strip
- 1=mirror
- 10=mirror and strip
- 5=RAID5
- 6=RAID6
- RAID level discussions are outside the scope of this web page but if you have more then 4 SSD, I would recommend RAID5 for maximum disk space with protection.
IBM SAS Disk Array Manager
Move cursor to desired item and press Enter.
List SAS Disk Array Configuration
Create an Array Candidate pdisk and Format to 528 Byte Sectors
Create a SAS Disk Array
Delete a SAS Disk Array
Add Disks to an Existing SAS Disk Array
Migrate an Existing SAS Disk Array to a New RAID Level
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Select a RAID Level |
| |
| Move cursor to desired item and press Enter. |
| |
| 0 |
| 5 |
| 10 |
| 6 |
| |
| F1=Help F2=Refresh F3=Cancel |
| F8=Image F10=Exit Enter=Do |
F1| /=Find n=Find Next |
F9+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
- The above was the screen for the fancy RAID and Cache SAS adapter (not the simple internal SAS controller) which has the more complex RAID options.
- Note: I only have one SSD, so the fancy RAID options are not really available but would be if for example, I had 8 Solid Sate Drives in this EXP 12S SAS I/O Drawer and then I would want a 7 data + 1 parity RAID5 setup, which I think will be the popular choice for those using SSD to boost database performance.
- For the simple internal SAS controller of the p570 it only showed RAID 0 (zero).
- It then asked "strip width" - not clever as I only had one disk. I went with the recommended 256KB.
IBM SAS Disk Array Manager
Move cursor to desired item and press Enter.
List SAS Disk Array Configuration
Create an Array Candidate pdisk and Format to 528 Byte Sectors
Create a SAS Disk Array
Delete a SAS Disk Array
Add Disks to an Existing SAS Disk Array
Migrate an Existing SAS Disk Array to a New RAID Level
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Select a Stripe Size (in Kb) |
| |
| Move cursor to desired item and press Enter. |
| |
| 16 Kb |
| 64 Kb |
| > 256 Kb (recommended) |
| 512 Kb |
| |
| F1=Help F2=Refresh F3=Cancel |
| F8=Image F10=Exit Enter=Do |
F1| /=Find n=Find Next |
F9+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
- Now select the disks - I have only one but move to each and hit F7 - or - Escape 7.
- See the ">" for the selected drives
IBM SAS Disk Array Manager
Move cursor to desired item and press Enter.
List SAS Disk Array Configuration
Create an Array Candidate pdisk and Format to 528 Byte Sectors
Create a SAS Disk Array
Delete a SAS Disk Array
Add Disks to an Existing SAS Disk Array
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Select Disks to Use in the Array |
| |
| Move cursor to desired item and press F7. Use arrow keys to scroll. |
| ONE OR MORE items can be selected. |
| Press Enter AFTER making all selections. |
| |
| # RAID 0 supports a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 18 disks. |
| |
| > pdisk0 00040B00 Active Array Candidate 69.7GB Zeroed |
| |
| F1=Help F2=Refresh F3=Cancel |
| F7=Select F8=Image F10=Exit |
F1| Enter=Do /=Find n=Find Next |
F9+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
- Then a final warning while displaying your choices before it makes your desired configuration.
Create a SAS Disk Array
Type or select values in entry fields.
Press Enter AFTER making all desired changes.
[Entry Fields]
Controller sissas0
RAID Level 0
Stripe Size in KB 256
Selected Disks pdisk0
F1=Help F2=Refresh F3=Cancel F4=List
F5=Reset F6=Command F7=Edit F8=Image
F9=Shell F10=Exit Enter=Do
- This took less than a second to complete.
- You can also allocate a hot standby SSD, which can be used to replace a failed one that is working in a RAID 5 pack.
- Given 8 SSDs are allowed currently (May 2009) in the EXP 12S SAS I/O Drawer I think popular choices may be
- RAID 5 with 7+1 for the eight SSD plus one as hot standby - not actually in use so it is supported. This is slight bending of the rules.
- RAID 5 with 7+1 for the eight SSD plus one spare SSD on your desk to be added to any of the SAS I/O Drawers you have. You need to be proactive and ready to add the spare quickly on any failed SSD so the RAID5 set can be rebuilt.
- RAID 5 with 6+1 using seven SSD and the eighth SSD as hot standby - never more than eight in the drawer. This is super safe.
- Once completed - exit smitty or diag with F10 or with escape 0.
Although this looks like a long winded process, the whole thing would take less than 30 seconds to complete and if you get it wrong and have not used the disks yet, you can simply remove the array and start again.
A final look at the setup using "List SAS Disk Array Configuration" and we can see the pdisk0 has been formated and is now available to AIX as hdisk9
COMMAND STATUS
Command: OK stdout: yes stderr: no
Before command completion, additional instructions may appear below.
[TOP]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name Resource State Description Size
------------------------------------------------------------------------
sissas0 FFFFFFFF Primary PCI Express x8 Ext Dual-x4 3Gb SAS Adapter
hdisk9 00FF0000 Optimal RAID 0 Array 69.7GB
pdisk0 00040B00 Active Array Member 69.7GB
hdisk1 00040000 Available SAS Disk Drive 146.8GB
hdisk2 00040100 Available SAS Disk Drive 146.8GB
hdisk3 00040300 Available SAS Disk Drive 146.8GB
hdisk4 00040400 Available SAS Disk Drive 146.8GB
[MORE...5]
F1=Help F2=Refresh F3=Cancel F6=Command
F8=Image F9=Shell F10=Exit /=Find
n=Find Next
Part 4 - Using the New hdisks
- Run: cfgmgr (not sure this was needed but does no harm)
- Run: lspv (and you can see the new hdisk ready for use)
# lspv
hdisk0 000e0a31633d3fc2 rootvg active
hdisk1 none None
hdisk2 none None
hdisk3 none None
hdisk4 none None
hdisk5 none None
hdisk6 none None
hdisk7 00c1cd8fd2884980 None
hdisk8 none None
hdisk9 none None
# lsdev -Cc disk
hdisk0 Available Virtual SCSI Disk Drive
hdisk1 Available 00-00-00 SAS Disk Drive
hdisk2 Available 00-00-00 SAS Disk Drive
hdisk3 Available 00-00-00 SAS Disk Drive
hdisk4 Available 00-00-00 SAS Disk Drive
hdisk5 Available 00-00-00 SAS Disk Drive
hdisk6 Available 00-00-00 SAS Disk Drive
hdisk7 Available 00-00-00 SAS Disk Drive
hdisk8 Available 00-00-00 SAS Disk Drive
hdisk9 Available 00-00-00 SAS RAID 0 Disk Array
# lsconf
System Model: IBM,8203-E4A
Machine Serial Number: 10E0A31
Processor Type: PowerPC_POWER6
Processor Implementation Mode: POWER 6
Processor Version: PV_6_Compat
Number Of Processors: 1
Processor Clock Speed: 4204 MHz
CPU Type: 64-bit
Kernel Type: 64-bit
LPAR Info: 1 silver_lpar2
Memory Size: 2048 MB
Good Memory Size: 2048 MB
Platform Firmware level: EL340_070
Firmware Version: IBM,EL340_070
Console Login: enable
Auto Restart: true
Full Core: false
Network Information
Host Name: silver_lpar2
IP Address: 9.69.44.81
Sub Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 9.69.44.1
Name Server: 9.137.62.2
Domain Name: aixncc.uk.ibm.com
Paging Space Information
Total Paging Space: 512MB
Percent Used: 2%
Volume Groups Information
==============================================================================
rootvg:
PV_NAME PV STATE TOTAL PPs FREE PPs FREE DISTRIBUTION
hdisk0 active 511 384 102..78..00..102..102
==============================================================================
INSTALLED RESOURCE LIST
The following resources are installed on the machine.
+/- = Added or deleted from Resource List.
* = Diagnostic support not available.
Model Architecture: chrp
Model Implementation: Multiple Processor, PCI bus
+ sys0 System Object
+ sysplanar0 System Planar
* vio0 Virtual I/O Bus
* vscsi0 U8203.E4A.10E0A31-V1-C3-T1 Virtual SCSI Client Adapter
* cd0 U8203.E4A.10E0A31-V1-C3-T1-L8200000000000000 Virtual SCSI Optical Served by VIO Server
* hdisk0 U8203.E4A.10E0A31-V1-C3-T1-L8100000000000000 Virtual SCSI Disk Drive
* ent0 U8203.E4A.10E0A31-V1-C2-T1 Virtual I/O Ethernet Adapter (l-lan)
* vsa0 U8203.E4A.10E0A31-V1-C0 LPAR Virtual Serial Adapter
* vty0 U8203.E4A.10E0A31-V1-C0-L0 Asynchronous Terminal
* pci0 U789C.001.DQD3561-P1 PCI Express Bus
+ sissas0 U789C.001.DQD3561-P1-C3-T1 PCI Express x8 Ext Dual-x4 3Gb SAS Adapter
* sas0 U789C.001.DQD3561-P1-C3-T1 Controller SAS Protocol
+ ses0 U5886.001.P83T072-C1 SAS Enclosure Services Device
* sasdrawer0 U5886.001.P83T072 SAS DASD Drawer
+ ses1 U5886.001.P83T072-C2 SAS Enclosure Services Device
+ hdisk1 U5886.001.P83T072-P1-D1 SAS Disk Drive (146800 MB)
+ hdisk2 U5886.001.P83T072-P1-D2 SAS Disk Drive (146800 MB)
+ hdisk3 U5886.001.P83T072-P1-D4 SAS Disk Drive (146800 MB)
+ hdisk4 U5886.001.P83T072-P1-D5 SAS Disk Drive (146800 MB)
+ hdisk5 U5886.001.P83T072-P1-D6 SAS Disk Drive (146800 MB)
+ hdisk6 U5886.001.P83T072-P1-D8 SAS Disk Drive (146800 MB)
+ hdisk7 U5886.001.P83T072-P1-D3 SAS Disk Drive (146800 MB)
+ hdisk8 U5886.001.P83T072-P1-D7 SAS Disk Drive (146800 MB)
+ pdisk0 U5886.001.P83T072-P1-D12 Physical SAS Disk Drive <----- SSD
* hdisk9 U789C.001.DQD3561-P1-C3-T1-LFF0000-L0 SAS RAID 0 Disk Array <----- SSD Array
* sata0 U789C.001.DQD3561-P1-C3-T1 Controller SATA Protocol
+ L2cache0 L2 Cache
+ mem0 Memory
+ proc0 Processor
- Use the new SSD disk array just like a regular hdisk
- Add it to a volume group (VG) or make a new VG for it. For example with this disk above: mkvg -y ssdvg hdisk9
- Create a JFS2 file system (I use smitty jfs2)
I hope that helps you get your SSD online and adding to the performance of your machine.
