A colleague of mine was planning to modify the max_xfer_size attribute on a couple of FC adapters in one of his AIX LPARs. As he was describing his plan to me, I asked him how he intended to back out of the change should the LPAR fail to boot after the modifications. “ But, what could possibly go wrong?” he fired back. I advised him to use multibos to create a standby (backup) instance of the AIX OS, just in case. He begrudgingly did so, just to keep me happy.   The next day he told me the following tale.   He had modified the FC... [More]

Tags:  bacon max_xfer_size multibos chris_gibson aix

Thanks to the IBM Virtual Loaner Program, I was able to try out my first POWER7 LPAR today.  Some interesting items for me to research.   # lparstat -i Node Name                                  : node1 Partition Name                             : node1 Partition Number                           : 5 Type                                       : Shared-SMT-4 Mode                                       : Uncapped Entitled Capacity                          : 0.50 Partition Group-ID                         : 32773 Shared Pool ID          ... [More]

If you turn on Multiboot from within the SMS menu (as shown below), your LPAR will always boot into SMS, regardless of your AIX boot list and/or LPAR profile settings.    PowerPC Firmware Version EM310_048 SMS 1.6 (c) Copyright IBM Corp. 2000,2005 All rights reserved. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Multiboot 1. Select Install/Boot Device 2. Configure Boot Device Order 3. Multiboot Startup <ON> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Navigation keys:... [More]

So, your root volume group is called old_rootvg not rootvg?   Wait……what!?   aixlpar1 : # lspv hdisk0           00c342c68dfcbdfb              old_rootvg       active   < This is BAD! hdisk1           00c342c6161c6b47              appvg            active   How did you end up in this situation? Did you reinstall AIX with some strange incantation or did some alternate disk activity go horribly wrong? Not sure? Me neither!   Fortunately the following tech-note and associated script can help.  ... [More]

Tags:  aix importvg old_rootvg chris_gibson rootvg synclvodm odmdelete

I NEVER thought this would happen! But, “NEVER SAY NEVER!”.  IBM just announced that AIX 5.3 can now run on POWER8.   http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=ca&infotype=an&appname=iSource&supplier=872&letternum=ENUSAP16-0152   As you’d expect, there are some caveats!   A special PTF (U86665.bff) provides POWER8 support on AIX  5.3 with the following limitations:   The LPAR must be at AIX 5.3 TL12 SP9 (latest 5.3 release). The POWER8 LPAR will run in POWER6... [More]

    IBM recently announced some significant changes to their ‘AIX Release and Service Delivery’ strategy. Starting February 2011, the following changes will apply for both AIX 6 and AIX 7.                 •           Three years of support for each Technology Level (TL). •           A single Technology Level per AIX version, per year. •           Service Packs will be released approximately 4 times per year per Technology Level.   Some of the benefits of the new strategy are:   Longer support for Technology Levels. –       More... [More]

# fcstat –D fcs0 FIBRE CHANNEL STATISTICS REPORT: fcs0 …  FC SCSI Adapter Driver Queue Statistics     Number of active commands:   0     High water mark of active commands:   17     Number of pending commands:   0     High water mark of pending commands:   1     Number of commands in the Adapter Driver Held off queue:  0     High water mark of number of commands in the Adapter Driver Held off... [More]

Today, IBM announced AIX version 7.   http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/software/aix/v71/preview.html Several new features were mentioned in the launch, but there were two new features that I found particularly interesting:   - AIX 5.2 WPARs for AIX 7 - Cluster Aware AIX   I thought I would briefly describe each feature in this post.   AIX 5.2 WPARs for AIX 7   In AIX version 7, administrators will now have the capability to create Workload Partitions (WPARs) that can run AIX 5.2, inside an AIX 7 operating system instance. This will... [More]

There are two new HMC (V7.7.3.0) commands that can force a client Virtual Fibre Channel adapter to log into a SAN. This should make the life of the AIX and SAN administrator easier, as they will no longer need to install AIX in order for the new VFC adapters to log into the SAN. Although there was an unsupported method* for doing this already (see links below). Nor will the SAN admins need to “blind” zone the WWPNs.   There was some indication of this in the latest VIOS FP readme:  ... [More]

Tags:  virtual chnportlogin aix gibson lsnportlogin channel npiv adapter chris fibre