Managing the system attributes

After you synchronize the KSYS cluster by using the ksysmgr sync ksyscluster command, the KSYS subsystem sets up the default system-wide persistent attributes. The KSYS subsystem uses these system-wide persistent attributes for activities such as automatic rediscovery of the resources, notification of critical events, removal of duplicate notification.

By default, the KSYS subsystem sets up the following system attributes:

auto_discovery_time

Specifies the time interval in hours after which the KSYS subsystem rediscovers the environment automatically for any new or modified resources. By default, the value of this attribute is 24 hours, which means that the KSYS subsystem discovers the resources and updates its database about the virtual machines in a period of 24 hours.

The minimum acceptable period is 24 hours. The HMC and VIOS are also involved in the rediscovery process to update information about the virtual machines. Therefore, if your environment is large (for example, hundreds of logical partitions in the data center), you might want to increase this period to reduce load on the HMC, VIOS, and the underlying I/O subsystems. Any configuration changes to the hosts, virtual machines, disks, and any other entities (for example, addition of new disks to a virtual machine) are captured when the rediscovery occurs after the specified period. This attribute also specifies the span of time during which any changes in the configuration setting can be lost if a disaster occurs before the rediscovery.

lose_vios_redundancy

Specifies to start the virtual machines in another site without the dual VIOS setup in the target host. By default, this attribute is set to no, which means that the dual VIOS setup is maintained during the disaster recovery operation.

If your currently active site, which has dual VIOS configuration, fails, and one of the VIOS in the target host of the backup site is not functioning, you might want to recover the virtual machines with only one VIOS on the backup site and continue the workloads that are running in the active site. In this case, you can set this attribute to yes. However, if the virtual machines are started with single VIOS configuration on the backup site, and later if you want to move the virtual machines back to the previous site that has a dual VIOS configuration, you must manually add the second VIOS into the configuration. For more information, see Configuring VIOS partitions for a dual setup.

auto_reverse_mirror

Resets the storage data mirroring after a site recovery operation.

Currently, this attribute is always set to no. You must resynchronize the storage data mirroring manually by using the ksysmgr resync command.

notification_level

Enables or disables the notification for different types of events. This parameter supports the following values:

low (default): Only critical error events are notified.
medium: Critical and warning error events are notified.
high: All events, which include informational events, are notified.
disable: None of the events are notified.

dup_event_processing

Reduces duplicate event notifications. The email and script notifications that are related to the duplicate events are also disabled. This parameter can have the following values:

yes (default): Notifies about only those events that are not repeated in the last 24 hours.
no: Notifies all the messages.

replication_type

Specifies the storage replication mode across the sites. This parameter can have the following values:

async: Specifies the asynchronous replication mode in which data is transferred across sites in predefined timed cycles or in delta sets.
sync: Specifies the synchronous replication mode in which the storage subsystem acknowledges to the host that it has received and checked the data.

You must also specify the source and the target sites that are associated with the storage replication operation.

network_mapping

Enables or disables the network mapping policies for all hosts and host groups across the active site and the backup site. end of change

network

Creates network mapping policy for all hosts and host groups. This attribute can be specified only when the network_mapping attribute is set to enable.

You can create either a VLAN mapping policy or a virtual switch mapping policy. This attribute must be specified as follows:

[network=<vlanmap|vswitchmap> sites=<siteA,siteB> 
      siteA=<#,[#,...]> siteB=<#,[#,...]>

To query the information or status related to system-wide attributes, use the following command:

ksysmgr query system [properties | status [monitor=<no|yes>]]

Examples for querying system properties and status

To query the existing values of the system attributes, run the following command:

ksysmgr query system properties

An output that is similar to the following example is displayed:

System-Wide Persistent Attributes
auto_discovery_time  ="00:00" hours
lose_vios_redundancy ="no"
auto_reverse_mirror  ="yes"
notification_level   ="low"
dup_event_processing ="yes"
replication_type     ="Asynchronous"
network_mapping      ="enable"
network              =vlanmap sites=siteA,siteB
      siteA= VLAN1,VLAN12,VLAN13,VLAN5 
      siteB= VLAN1,VLAN22,VLAN23,VLAN5

To query the system status, run the following command:
```
ksysmgr query system status
```
The output might look similar to the following sample:
```
Discovery is in progress for Site Site1.
 Discovery is in progress for Site Site2.
 Please use "ksysmgr query system status monitor=yes " to track the progress of the operation.
```
If you specify the monitor=yes parameter, the KSYS monitors and displays all the current actions on the KSYS node. The actions include discovery, verification, movement, and recovery operations, which continue to progress even when the command is killed or when you close the command window. The monitor parameter also displays the encountered errors that are logged by the virtual machines, hosts, disk pairs, and disk groups. For example:
```
ksysmgr query system status monitor=yes
        Discovery is in progress for Site Site1.
        Discovery is in progress for Site Site2.
        Monitoring status...
Running discovery on entire site, this may take few minutes...
…
```

To modify the system-wide attributes, use the following command:

ksysmgr modify system <attribute>=<new_value>

Examples for modifying the system-wide attributes

To enable the KSYS subsystem to automatically rediscover the resources once in two days, run the following command:
```
ksysmgr modify system auto_discover_time=48
```
To change the notification level of your system to receive notification for all critical errors and warnings for all events, run the following command:
```
ksysmgr modify system notification_level=medium
```
To change the duplicate event processing option to receive notification for all events, even if the events are duplicated, run the following command:
```
ksysmgr modify system dup_event_processing=yes
```
To change the storage replication mode between two sites from asynchronous mode to synchronous mode, run the following command:
```
ksysmgr modify system replication_type=sync sites=SiteA,SiteB
```