If you work with NPIV, you might have experienced it: everything is working fine, but there are mysterious errors 7870C5A4
on VIOSes. Disturbing.
vios3b:/root# errpt | grep vfchost
7870C5A4 0620125012 T S vfchost12 Virtual FC Host Adapter detected an erro
7870C5A4 0620125012 T S vfchost12 Virtual FC Host Adapter detected an erro
7870C5A4 0620125012 T S vfchost0 Virtual FC Host Adapter detected an erro
7870C5A4 0620125012 T S vfchost0 Virtual FC Host Adapter detected an erro
vios3b:/root# errpt -a -j 7870C5A4 | more
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
LABEL: VFC_HOST
IDENTIFIER: 7870C5A4
Date/Time: Wed Jun 20 12:50:56 GMT+02:00 2012
Sequence Number: 251423
Machine Id: 00F71FD94C00
Node Id: vios3b
Class: S
Type: TEMP
WPAR: Global
Resource Name: vfchost12
Description
Virtual FC Host Adapter detected an error
Probable Causes
Virtual FC Host Adapter Driver is an Undefined State
Failure Causes
Virtual FC Host Adapter Driver is an Undefined State
Recommended Actions
Remove Virtual FC Host Adapter Instance, then Configure the same instance
Detail Data
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
module: npiv_port_sciolst 1.61.1.11 rc: 000000000000004F location: 00002800
data: 1 9 29 0 210008
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The important parts are highlighted in red. Error entries occur every time you run cfgmgr
on a client. What's happening? This error shows up, when you have zones between a client NPIV adapter and a number of storage FC ports, but the host mapping on the storage doesn't use all of them. A picture worth of dozens of sentences:
AIX box represents an LPAR with virtual fibre channels. To have the picture easy to read, VIOS and physical connection is not shown in the picture. Blue lines show zoning, orange lines show mapping. There are two zones:
- zone A: fcs0,hba0,hba1,hba2
- zone B: fcs1,hba3,hba4,hba5
And on the storage there are two host mappings (hostconnects on DS8k) defined
- host mapping #1: fcs0,hba0,hba1
- host mapping #2: fcs1,hba4,hba5
There are two storage ports hba2, and hba3 that are part of zone sets, but they are not used to present volumes to the client LPAR. For every port zoned but not mapped, one error entry will be generated in VIOS, while running
cfgmgr
on the client LPAR. One error
7870C5A4
entry will be generated for the storage port hba2, one will be generated for the storage port hba3.
If you want to get rid of the entries in the error log, align your zoning with the mapping on the storage. Either narrow your zoning, or widen your mapping on the storage. Hope this helps.
BTW: I don't know, what the error means, whether it is a bug, or an ignorable error entry. I just like an empty error log.
Tags: 
cfgmgr
vios
npiv
7870c5a4
error