VIOS 3.1.4.21 Release Notes

Package Information

PACKAGE: Update Release 3.1.4.21
IOSLEVEL: 3.1.4.21

General package notes

Be sure to heed all minimum space requirements before installing.

Review the list of fixes included in Update Release 3.1.4.21

To take full advantage of all the functions available in the VIOS, it may be necessary to be at the latest system firmware level. If a system firmware update is necessary, it is recommended that the firmware be updated before you update the VIOS to Update Release 3.1.4.21.

Microcode or system firmware downloads for Power Systems

If the VIOS being updated has filesets installed from the VIOS Expansion Pack, be sure to update those filesets with the latest VIOS Expansion Pack if updates are available.

Update Release 3.1.4.21 updates your VIOS partition to ioslevel 3.1.4.21. To determine if Update Release 3.1.4.21 is already installed, run the following command from the VIOS command line.

$ ioslevel

If Update Release 3.1.4.21 is installed, the command output is 3.1.4.21.

For Customers using NVMe Over Fabric (SAN) as their Boot Disk

Booting from NVMeoF disk may fail if certain fabric errors are returned, hence a boot disk set up with multiple paths is recommended.  In case there is a failure to boot, the boot process may continue if you exit from the SMS menu. Another potential workaround is to discover boot LUNs from the SMS menu and then retry boot.

For Customers Using Third Party Java-based Software 

This only applies to customers who both use third party Java based software and have run updateios -remove_outdated_filesets to remove Java 7 from their system.

To prevent errant behavior when editing customer’s /etc/environment file, updateios does not make changes to that file when run. If a customer is using software that depends on using Java and having the path to it in your PATH environment variable, the following edit should be made to allow programs that use the PATH environment variable to locate Java 8.

In the /etc/environment file, customers should see:

PATH=[various directories]:/usr/java7_64/jre/bin:/usr/java7_64/bin

To address a potential issue with Java-dependent third party software, this should be converted to:

PATH=[various directories]:/usr/java8_64/jre/bin:/usr/java8_64/bin

Note

If the Virtual I/O servers are installed on POWER10 systems and configured with “32Gb PCIe4 2-Port FC Adapter, Feature Code(s) EN1J and EN1K”, then the requirement is to update the adapter microcode level to 7710812214105106.070115 before updating the Virtual I/O server to 3.1.4.21 level.

Please refer to the release notes at this link

3.1.4.21 New Features

VIOS 3.1.4.21 adds the following new features:

VIOS Shared Storage Pool Logging Enhancements

The two major enhancements for VIOS Shared Storage Pool in this release are as follows:

·       The creation of dbn.log file within a Shared Storage Pool (SSP).
This file tracks all elections and relinquishes of the Database Node (DBN) role and debugs DBN-related problems easily.

·       The compression and storage of vio_daemon logs.
The number of logs that can be retained is increased by 15 times with no impact to storage capacity. This is done by compressing old VIOS logs and by tagging them with appropriate date and time information. This reduces the risk of logs that might contain critical information from being overwritten by newer logs.

N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) Enhancements: NVMeoF Protocol Support

The NPIV is a standardized method for virtualizing a physical Fibre Channel (FC) port. An NPIV-capable FC host bus adapter (HBA) can have multiple N_Ports, each with a unique identity. The NPIV, coupled with the adapter-sharing capabilities of the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS), allows a physical Fibre Channel HBA to be shared across multiple guest operating systems. The PowerVM implementation of NPIV enables POWER® logical partitions (LPARs) to have virtual fibre channel host bus adapters, each with a dedicated
worldwide port name. Each virtual Fibre Channel HBA has a unique storage area network (SAN) identity similar to that of a dedicated physical HBA.

The Non-Volatile Memory Express over Fabrics (NVMeoF) protocol in the NPIV stack is supported in Virtual I/O Server Version 3.1.4.0. A single virtual adapter provides access to both Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI) and NVMeoF protocols if the physical adapter can support them. The application, which is running on the client partition and capable of handling the NPIV-NVMeoF protocol, can send I/Os in parallel to SCSI and NVMeoF disks that are coming from a single virtual adapter. The hardware and software requirements for NVMeoF protocol enablement in the NPIV stack are as follows:

·       VIOS Version 3.1.4.0, or later

·       NPIV-NVMeoF capable client (currently AIX® Version 7.3 Technology Level 01, or later)

·       POWER 10 system with firmware version FW 1030, or later

·       32 or 64 GB FC adapters with physical NVMeoF support

VIOS Operating System Monitoring Enhancement

This release adds support for monitoring the VIOS operating system state by the POWER Hypervisor. If the VIOS partition is not responsive (due to certain conditions), then the hypervisor restarts the VIOS partition while it takes the system dump for debugging purpose. This helps to recover the VIOS partition from errors, for example, if the CPU is hijacked by the highest-level interrupt, the system progress is stopped. The ioscli viososmon command is added to understand the hang detection interval and the action when the hang is detected. This support requires POWER firmware version FW 1030, or later and VIOS Version 3.1.4.0, or later.

Support for NFSv4 Mounts on VIOS

The ioscli mount command which previously, by default, only supported the NFSv3 mount of the AIX is updated to support NFSv4 mounting. The changes allow VIOS to be able to invoke commands for the following actions:

·       Setting Network File System (NFS) domain using chnfsdom from command line interface (CLI)

The setting of the NFS domain is accomplished by adding a Role-based access control (RBAC) support for the chnfsdom command.

·       Invoking the NFSv4 mounting

The ioscli mount command is updated to support invoking the NFSv4 mounting. The current ioscli mount command defaults to NFSv3. You can invoke the “o vers=4” option with the new “-nfsvers <version> <Node: > <Directory> < Directory>” option that is added to the ioscli mount command. The values that are supported for the version are 3 and 4.

Note: The ioscli mount command supports NFS versions that are supported by the AIX mount command.

·       Starting the nfsrgyd daemon

For version 4, if the mount is successful, a check is done to see if the nfsrgyd daemon is already started. And if it has not yet started, the nfsrgyd daemon is started.

Hardware Requirements

VIOS 3.1.4.21 can run on any of the following Power Systems:

POWER 8 or later.

Known Capabilities and Limitations

The following requirements and limitations apply to Shared Storage Pool (SSP) features and any associated virtual storage enhancements.

Requirements for Shared Storage Pool

• Platforms: POWER 8 and later (includes Blades), IBM PureFlex Systems (Power Compute Nodes only)
• System requirements per SSP node:
• Minimum CPU: 1 CPU of guaranteed entitlement
• Minimum memory: 4GB
• Storage requirements per SSP cluster (minimum): 1 fiber-channel attached disk for repository, 1 GB
• At least 1 fiber-channel attached disk for data, 10GB

Limitations for Shared Storage Pool

Software Installation

• When installing updates for VIOS Update Release 3.1.4.21 participating in a Shared Storage Pool, the Shared Storage Pool Services must be stopped on the node being upgraded.

SSP Configuration

*Support for additional VIOS Nodes and LPAR Mappings:

Prerequisites for expanded support:

• Over 16 VIOS Nodes requires that the SYSTEM (metadata) tier contains only SSD storage.
• Over 250 Client LPARs per VIOS requires each VIOS have at least 4 CPUs and 8 GB memory.

Here are the new maximum values for each of these configuration options, if the associated hardware specification has been met:

Other notes:

• Maximum number of physical volumes that can be added to or replaced from a pool at one time: 64
• The Shared Storage Pool cluster name must be less than 63 characters long.
• The Shared Storage Pool pool name must be less than 127 characters long.
• The maximum supported LU size is 4TB, however, for high I/O workloads it is recommended to use multiple smaller LUs as it will improve performance. For example, using 16 separate 16GB LUs would yield better performance than a single 256GB LU for applications that perform reads and writes to a variety of storage locations concurrently.
• The size of the /var drive should be greater than or equal to 3GB to ensure proper logging.

Network Configuration

• Uninterrupted network connectivity is required for operation. i.e., The network interface used for Shared Storage Pool configuration must be on a highly reliable network which is not congested.
• A Shared Storage Pool configuration can use IPV4 or IPV6, but not a combination of both.
• A Shared Storage Pool configuration should configure the TCP/IP resolver routine for name resolution to resolve host names locally first, and then use the DNS. For step by step instructions, refer to the TCP/IP name resolution documentation in the IBM Knowledge Center.
• The forward and reverse lookup should resolve to the IP address/hostname that is used for Shared Storage Pool configuration.
• It is recommended that the VIOSs that are part of the Shared Storage Pool configuration keep their clocks synchronized.

Storage Configuration

• Virtual SCSI devices provisioned from the Shared Storage Pool may drive higher CPU utilization than the classic Virtual SCSI devices.
• Using SCSI reservations (SCSI Reserve/Release and SCSI-3 Reserve) for fencing physical disks in the Shared Storage pool is not supported.
• SANCOM will not be supported in a Shared Storage Pool environment.

Shared Storage Pool capabilities and limitations

• On the client LPAR Virtual SCSI disk is the only peripheral device type supported by SSP at this time.
• When creating Virtual SCSI Adapters for VIOS LPARs, the option "Any client partition can connect" is not supported.
• VIOSs configured for SSP require that Shared Ethernet Adapter(s) (SEA) be setup for Threaded mode (the default mode). SEA in Interrupt Mode is not supported within SSP.
• VIOSs configured for SSP can be used as a Paging Space Partition (PSP), but the storage for the PSP paging spaces must come from logical devices not within a Shared Storage Pool. Using a VIOS SSP logical unit (LU) as an Active Memory Sharing (AMS) paging space or as the suspend/resume file is not supported.
• LPAR clients are not supported if they use JFS as their filesystem.  If JFS is used, there is a risk of data corruption in the event of a network outage.  JFS2 and other file systems are unaffected by this issue.

Installation Information

Pre-installation Information and Instructions

Please ensure that your rootvg contains at least 30 GB and that there is at least 4GB free space before you attempt to update to Update Release 3.1.4.21. Run the lsvg rootvg command, and then ensure there is enough free space.

Example: 

$ lsvg rootvg 

VOLUME GROUP:       

rootvg                   

VG IDENTIFIER:  

00f6004600004c000000014306a3db3d

VG STATE:

active     

PP SIZE:

64 megabyte(s)

VG PERMISSION:            

read/write               

TOTAL PPs:

511 (32704 megabytes)

MAX LVs:                   

256                      

FREE PPs:

64 (4096 megabytes)

LVs:                       

14                       

USED PPs:

447 (28608 megabytes)

OPEN LVs:                    

12 

QUORUM:

2 (Enabled)

TOTAL PVs:                                  

1

VG DESCRIPTORS:

2

STALE PVs:                                  

0

STALE PPs: 

0

ACTIVE PVs:                                         

1

AUTO ON:

yes

MAX PPs per VG:     

32512                                     

MAX PPs per PV:     

1016 

MAX PVs:

32

LTG size (Dynamic):                

256 kilobyte(s)

AUTO SYNC:

no

HOT SPARE:                

no                       

BB POLICY:

relocatable

PV RESTRICTION:     

none                     

INFINITE RETRY:

no

VIOS upgrades with SDDPCM

A single, merged lpp_source is not supported for VIOS that uses SDDPCM. However, if you use SDDPCM, you can still enable a single boot update by using the alternate method described at the following location:

SDD and SDDPCM migration procedures when migrating VIOS from version 1.x to version 2.x

Virtual I/O Server support for Power Systems

Upgrading from VIOS version 3.1.0.00

VIOS Update Release 3.1.4.21 may be applied directly to any VIOS at level 3.1.0.00.

Upgrading from VIOS version 2.2.4 and above

The VIOS must first be upgraded to 3.1.0.00 before the 3.1.4.21 update can be applied.  To learn more about how to do that, please read the information provided here.

Before installing the VIOS Update Release 3.1.4.21

Warning: The update may fail if there is a loaded media repository.

Instructions: Checking for a loaded media repository

To check for a loaded media repository, and then unload it, follow these steps.

1.     To check for loaded images, run the following command:

$ lsvopt 
The Media column lists any loaded media.

2.     To unload media images, run the following commands on all Virtual Target Devices that have loaded images.

$ unloadopt -vtd <file-backed_virtual_optical_device >

3.     To verify that all media are unloaded, run the following command again.

$ lsvopt 
The command output should show No Media for all VTDs.

Instructions: Migrate Shared Storage Pool Configuration

The Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) Version 2.2.2.1 or later, supports rolling updates for SSP clusters. The VIOS can be updated to Update Release 3.1.4.21 using rolling updates.

Non-disruptive rolling updated to VIOS 3.1 requires all SSP nodes to be at VIOS 2.2.6.31 or later. See detailed instructions in the VIOS 3.1 documentation

The rolling updates enhancement allows the user to apply Update Release 3.1.4.21 to the VIOS logical partitions in the cluster individually without causing an outage in the entire cluster. The updated VIOS logical partitions cannot use the new SSP capabilities until all VIOS logical partitions in the cluster are updated.

To upgrade the VIOS logical partitions to use the new SSP capabilities, ensure that the following conditions are met:

·        All VIOS logical partitions must have VIOS Update Release version 2.2.6.31 or later installed.

·        All VIOS logical partitions must be running. If any VIOS logical partition in the cluster is not running, the cluster cannot be upgraded to use the new SSP capabilities.

Instructions: Verify the cluster is running at the same level as your node.

1.     Run the following command:
$ cluster -status -verbose

2.     Check the Node Upgrade Status field, and you should see one of the following terms:

UP_LEVEL: This means that the software level of the logical partition is higher than the software level the cluster is running at.

ON_LEVEL: This means the software level of the logical partition and the cluster are the same.

Installing the Update Release

There is now a method to verify the VIOS update files before installation. This process requires access to openssl by the 'padmin' User, which can be accomplished by creating a link.

Instructions: Verifying VIOS update files.

To verify the VIOS update files, follow these steps:

1.     $ oem_setup_env

2.     Create a link to openssl 
# ln -s /usr/bin/openssl /usr/ios/utils/openssl 

3.     Verify the link to openssl was created 
# ls -alL /usr/bin/openssl /usr/ios/utils/openssl 

4.     Verify that both files display similar owner and size 

5.     # exit

Use one of the following methods to install the latest VIOS Service Release. As with all maintenance, you should create a VIOS backup before making changes.

If you are running a Shared Storage Pool configuration, you must follow the steps in Migrate Shared Storage Pool Configuration.

Note: While running 'updateios' in the following steps, you may see accessauth messages, but these messages can safely be ignored.

Version Specific Warning: Version 2.2.2.1, 2.2.2.2, 2.2.2.3, or 2.2.3.1

You must run updateios command twice to get bos.alt_disk_install.boot_images fileset update problem fixed.

Run the following command after the step of "$ updateios –accept –install –dev <directory_name >" completes.

$ updateios –accept –dev <directory_name >

Depending on the VIOS level, one or more of the LPPs below may be reported as "Missing Requisites", and they may be ignored.

MISSING REQUISITES: 

     X11.loc.fr_FR.base.lib 4.3.0.0        # Base Level Fileset

     bos.INed 6.1.6.0                      # Base Level Fileset

     bos.loc.pc.Ja_JP 6.1.0.0              # Base Level Fileset

     bos.loc.utf.EN_US 6.1.0.0             # Base Level Fileset

     bos.mls.rte 6.1.x.x                   # Base Level Fileset

Warning:  If VIOS rules have been deployed.

During update, there have been occasional issues with VIOS Rules files getting overwritten and/or system settings getting reset to their default values.

To ensure that this doesn’t affect you, we recommend making a backup of the current rules file.  This file is located here:

/home/padmin/rules/vios_current_rules.xml

First, to capture your current system settings, run this command:

$ rules -o capture

Then, either copy the file to a backup location, or save off a list of your current rules:

$ rules -o list > rules_list.txt

After this is complete, proceed to update as normal.  When your update is complete, check your current rules and ensure that they still match what is desired.  If not, either overwrite the original rules file with your backup, or proceed to use the ‘rules -o modify’ and/or ‘rules -o add’ commands to change the rules to match what is in your backup file.

Finally, if you’ve failed to back up your rules, and are not sure what the rules should be, you can deploy the recommended VIOS rules by using the following command:

$ rules -o deploy -d

Then, if you wish to copy these new VIOS recommended rules to your current rules file, just run:

$ rules -o capture

Note: This will overwrite any customized rules in the current rules file.

Applying Updates

Warning:

If the target node to be updated is part of a redundant VIOS pair, the VIOS partner node must be fully operational before beginning to update the target node.

Note:

For VIOS nodes that are part of an SSP cluster, the partner node must be shown in 'cluster -status ' output as having a cluster status of OK and a pool status of OK. If the target node is updated before its VIOS partner is fully operational, client LPARs may crash.

Instructions: Applying updates to a VIOS.

1. Log in to the VIOS as the user padmin.
2. If you use one or more File Backed Optical Media Repositories, you need to unload media images before you apply the Update Release. See details here.
3. If you use Shared Storage Pools, then Shared Storage Pool Services must be stopped.
   
   $ clstartstop -stop -n <cluster_name > -m <hostname >
   
   
4. To apply updates from a directory on your local hard disk, follow the steps:
1. Create a directory on the Virtual I/O Server.
   $ mkdir <directory_name >

2.     Using ftp, transfer the update file(s) to the directory you created.

To apply updates from a remotely mounted file system, and the remote file system is to be mounted read-only, follow the steps:

1. Mount the remote directory onto the Virtual I/O Server:
   $ mount remote_machine_name:directory /mnt
   
   

The update release can be burned onto a CD by using the ISO image file(s). To apply updates from the CD/DVD drive, follow the steps:

1. Place the CD-ROM into the drive assigned to VIOS.
   
   

5. Commit previous updates by running the updateios command:
   $ updateios -commit
   
   
6. Verify the updates files that were copied. This step can only be performed if the link to openssl was created.
   $ cp <directory_path >/ck_sum.bff /home/padmin 
   $ chmod 755 </home/padmin>/ck_sum.bff 
   $ ck_sum.bff <directory_path > 
   If there are missing updates or incomplete downloads, an error message is displayed.
   
   To see how to create a link to openssl, click here.
   
   
7. Apply the update by running the updateios command
   $ updateios -accept -install -dev <directory_name >
   
   
8. To load all changes, reboot the VIOS as user padmin .

$ shutdown -restart

Note: If shutdown –restart command failed, run swrole –PAdmin for padmin to set authorization and establish access to the shutdown command properly.

9. If cluster services were stopped in step 3, restart cluster services.

$ clstartstop -start -n <cluster_name > -m <hostname >

10. Verify that the update was successful by checking the results of the updateios command and by running the isolevel command, which should indicate that the ioslevel is now 3.1.4.21.

$ ioslevel

Post-installation Information and Instructions

Instructions: Checking for an incomplete installation caused by a loaded media repository.

After installing an Update Release, you can use this method to determine if you have encountered the problem of a loaded media library.

Check the Media Repository by running this command: 
$ lsrep

If the command reports: "Unable to retrieve repository data due to incomplete repository structure," then you have likely encountered this problem during the installation. The media images have not been lost and are still present in the file system of the virtual media library.

Running the lsvopt command should show the media images.

Instructions: Recovering from an incomplete installation caused by a loaded media repository.

To recover from this type of installation failure, unload any media repository images, and then reinstall the ios.cli.rte package. Follow these steps:

1.     Unload any media images

$ unloadopt -vtd <file-backed_virtual_optical_device>

2.     Reinstall the ios.cli.rte fileset by running the following commands.

To escape the restricted shell: 
$ oem_setup_env 
To install the failed fileset: 
# installp –Or –agX ios.cli.rte –d <device/directory > 
 To return to the restricted shell: 
# exit

3.     Restart the VIOS.

$ shutdown –restart

4.     Verify that the Media Repository is operational by running this command:

$ lsrep

Fixes included in this release

The list of fixes in 3.1.4.21