VIO on CX4 server problems

Question

We are having disk issues with IBM VIO servers using CX4 disks(SATA). The symptom are that when we do veritas commands (specifically vxdisk list) it take for ever.... like 30-45 minutes for the response. One time, unknowingly we issued too many of the commands and it eventually panicked the box. We are digging deeper into the problem and I am wondering about the initiator type and the Failover mode.

Initiator Type: Clariion Open
Failover Mode: 1

Can anyone comment on these? Thanx in advance.

Maduro

Allen Ward · Answer

Are you using PowerPath or native MPIO?We have several VIO server running on both CLARiiON (CX3 & CX4) and Symmetrix (DMX3) using PowerPath with no problems. We configure VIO identical to AIX and everything just 'works'.

Satty1 · Answer

vxdisk list communicates with the kernel devices to get the list of disk drives/luns available to the server. If that takes a long time to finish the list, then I'd look in to the following things first

->Check the output of powerpath & see if there
->Check for filesystems issues
->Check the device messages, dmesg, log messages
->Check for Vertias log messges

Maduro1 · Answer

We are using MPIO.

hersh1 · Answer

We were told to use Failover Mode 3 in our VIO environment. Told it handles NDU Upgrades better. We however don't have veritas in our environment and are using Powerpath as well. So not sure if that mode takes those things into account or not.

Maduro1 · Answer

Hey hersh. Thanx for the reply. Can you tell me who you mean by 'we were told'? Was it EMC support, was the suggested Failover Mode in any form of a document you could share?maduro

kelleg · Answer

On PowerLink look for Knowledgebase article emc99467 - this lists the different settings for all the operating systems. See the attached PDF,glen

hersh1 · Answer

Can I say Kelleg told us? Thanks for the doc, it is nice having everything consolidated into one.In case you are still curious, I believe it was our local support team that did the digging for us.

CLARiiON

VIO on CX4 server problems

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