Can AIX 5.3 boot from EVA5000?

[Gergely Fóti]

Dear All,

Has anybody succeeded to boot AIX 5.3 from EVA5000 anyhow? I read antemeta's overview - it supported with 6229 and 6239 hba, but the customer has 5716 hbas (with a p570 machine).

TIA,

Gergely Foti

[Matthias Rettl]

hy.

i think so. in the "HP StorageWorks 4000,6000,8000 Enterprise Virtual Array Connectivity 5.0A for IBM AIX Release Notes (5697-5256, May 2005)" (c00373198.pdf)

you can find: "Support is provide for booting from SAN with MPIO."

should be ok. not with antemeta, but MPIO works.

regards,
matthias

[Matthias Rettl]

oh. EVA 5k... sorry. thought 6k. try to figure it out.

[Sameer_Nirmal · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I doubt about AIX boot support on EVA 5000 with VCS V3.028 as I don't see any reference to confirm it. I know the bootup support was added for HP-UX , Linux in VCS V3.020.

Recently , I have read on HP website saying the improved funcationality with EVA4/6/8k would be added to EVA3/5k ( maybe porting XCS).I am not sure if AIX boot funcationality is added in XCS as well.

I would contact HP to make sure.

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Sorry, but HP's internal support docs state not supported with the 5716 HBAs

HTH

Duncan

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Sorry, but HP's internal support docs state SAN boot not supported with the 5716 HBAs

HTH

Duncan

[Gergely Fóti]

Finally we tried to make it, with Antemeta (it's supported multipathing driver, with supported SAN boot option), but it mess'd up the rootvg. Even HP engineer cannot succeed to solve it. Now we are waiting for some update for Antemeta.

[Russell Green]

Hi All,

We have a p590 and p520 running AIX v5.3 with 5716 hbas. Using Antemeta software (v 2.2.0.0) we are able to boot from a EVA 5K running VCS 3.0.25.

BUT, as we currently have 2 paths to our luns(via 2 controllers), I believe we are having Antemeta MPIO problems periodically when we reboot in that the partitions hang with LED code of 517. I have logged a call with HP, however we are about to try changing our zoning to only allow a single path to rootvg luns to prevent AIX/Antemeta from losing contact with the luns.

It was very annoying when after rebooting 3 or 4 times during the intial "move" to san booting, that a month later when we tried to reboot to update the TZ setting, we lost contact with rootvg (LED 517) and had to restore from mksyb to internal SCSI disks in order to boot up.

Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions/help. I have raised a change control to attempt to change our zoning, and will try to update you with my findings asap.

Russell Green, greenr@newsltd.com.au

[Tom O'Toole]

Don't know about antemeta, but do know that you cannot boot aix from EVA using securepath (cambex cards). However, if you can upgrade your EVA to VCX 4, which supports active/active controllers, you can use MPIO with the 5716, which will support boot from SAN.

If you can upgrade, this is definitely the way to go (and don't forget to set fast_fail on your fscsi devices!).

[Tom O'Toole]

Sorry I meant VCS (the 3000/5000 series), and the version which supports MPIO is V4.x. You will also need the MPIO 'fileset':

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&swItem=co-33843-2&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

[Russell Green]

I'm patiently waiting for our EVA guys to upgrade to VCS 4 for exactly that reason. We can apparently do load balancing, as opposed to just path failure as well. Obviously, it also takes the 3rd party Antemeta software out of the equation.