Setting up cluster SAN communication

PowerHA® SystemMirror® and Cluster Aware AIX® support an additional method of communication between the hosts called storage area network (SAN) communication.

SAN communications exploits the SAN physical links that exist in a typical data center to provide high speed communications between cluster nodes. This communications mechanism provides a fall back function if a failure occurs in the network communications paths between the cluster nodes.

SAN communication works for a set of disk adapters. You must have SAN zoning setup so that the Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) packets flow from host to host through the various switches in between each host.

Setting up SAN communication involves invoking a set of commands on the supported disk adapter to make it SAN communication capable.

In VIOS 2.2.0.11, or later, you can use SAN communication between logical partitions by establishing a virtual local area network though a virtual Ethernet adapter on each VIOS client. You can set up SAN communication through VIOS for both NPIV and vSCSI environments.