Configuring the AIX operating system

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You must configure the AIX® operating system before you can use IBM® Power Systems hosts with the system.

Before you begin

Before you configure the AIX host operating systems, the following tasks must be completed:
  • The system must be installed.
  • The appropriate host bus adapters must be installed.

About this task

After the prerequisite tasks are complete, use the following general steps to configure your AIX host system.

Procedure

  1. Zone the host to the system nodes on the Fibre Channel (FC) SAN.
  2. Verify that the FC ports appear in AIX. Each FC port appears through the lsdev command with a name starts with fcs. 
    bash-4.4# lsdev | grep fcs
fcs0       Available 00-00       PCIe3 2-Port 32Gb FC Adapter (df1000e314101506)
fcs1       Available 00-01       PCIe3 2-Port 32Gb FC Adapter (df1000e314101506)
    Note: If fcs device is not found, you can run the cfgmgr command.
  3. Check for FC-NVMe device availability.
    Note: AIX creates children devices of the fcs device for each protocol that AIX supports.
    1. The FC-NVMe protocol appears through the lsdev command with a name starts with fcnvme. 
      bash-4.4# lsdev | grep fcnvme
fcnvme0    Available 00-00-02    FC-NVMe Protocol Device
fcnvme1    Available 00-01-02    FC-NVMe Protocol Device
    2. If the FC-NVMe device is not detected, you can enable it by using a smitty command for each port. 
      smitty -> Devices -> FC Adapter -> FC-NVMe Device -> Enable a FC-NVMe Protocol Device
  4. Find the host NVMe Qualified Name (NQN) from each FC-NVMe port. 
    bash-4.4# lsattr -El fcnvme0
attach     switch      How this adapter is connected  False
autoconfig available   Configuration State            True
host_nqn   nqn.2018-04.com.ibm:aix.fc.pn.0x100000109ba9d1c9.nn.0x0x200000109ba9d1c9   Host NQN (NVMe Qualified Name) True
  5. Create FC-NVMe host type in target.
    Note: In AIX, each port has its own NQN. You can configure two NQNs to add a host to the target. If you have more ports, you can work on the host cluster, where each pair is defined as host.
  6. Create a volume and map to the FC-NVMe host object.
  7. Run the cfgmgr command without any parameters.
  8. To check the FC-NVMe paths and disks, run the following command: 
    lsdev | grep -i nvme
    The NVMe Discovery Controller and the NVMe Dynamic Controller appear for each path. The following example shows the four paths between the host and the target for the NVMe Discovery Controllers and the NVMe IO dynamic Controllers:
    nvme0 Available 00-00-02 NVMe Discovery Controller
nvme1 Available 00-00-02 NVMe Discovery Controller
nvme2 Available 00-01-02 NVMe Discovery Controller
nvme3 Available 00-01-02 NVMe Discovery Controller
nvme4 Available 00-00-02 NVMe Dynamic Controller
nvme5 Available 00-00-02 NVMe Dynamic Controller
nvme6 Available 00-01-02 NVMe Dynamic Controller
nvme7 Available 00-01-02 NVMe Dynamic Controller
    The following example shows the mapped volumes as hdisk:
    hdisk1 Available 00-00-02 NVMe Flash Disk
hdisk2 Available 00-00-02 NVMe Flash Disk
hdisk3 Available 00-00-02 NVMe Flash Disk
hdisk4 Available 00-00-02 NVMe Flash Disk
hdisk5 Available 00-00-02 NVMe Flash Disk
hdisk6 Available 00-00-02 NVMe Flash Disk
hdisk7 Available 00-00-02 NVMe Flash Disk
hdisk8 Available 00-00-02 NVMe Flash Disk
hdisk9 Available 00-00-02 NVMe Flash Disk
hdisk10 Available 00-00-02 NVMe Flash Disk