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July 6th, 2008 21:00

Enabling VCM bit on FA ports which are live

We have few FAs where the VCM bit are disabled.

Many AIX hosts are connected to these FAs.

Support updated me that there is no safe way to enable VCM bit.
If a the vcm state is changed while the hosts are accessing disks then there is a chance that data corruption could occur.
For this reason the hosts will need to be temporarily stop i/o on these paths - i.e
We need to stop the db engine, umount the fs, stop the VxVM volumes (or whatever is relevant for your OS).

Has anybody enabled VCM bit on the FAs which are connected to Hosts ?
Any better recommendations where there is no or minimal disruption to the host ?

2 Intern

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20.4K Posts

July 7th, 2008 02:00

i have not done this but i am suspecting that not only will you need to do the steps you already mentioned (stop db, umount fs ..etc) but also be ready to mask devices to appropriate host's WWNs. When VCM bit is not enabled on FA (for Celerra gateway, Mainframe) these systems pretty much see everything that gets mapped to that FA. Do you have open systems connected to FAs that do not have VCM enabled ?

131 Posts

July 7th, 2008 04:00

If you have multiple paths to the storage and multi-pathing software (eg EMC PowerPath or equivalent) which is correctly configured and which you have tested and have confidance in - then you could carry out this work on one path at a time without having to bring the hosts down.

108 Posts

July 7th, 2008 05:00

Agree with Marc

2 Intern

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20.4K Posts

July 7th, 2008 06:00

have you done this before ?

76 Posts

July 7th, 2008 08:00

Dynamox,

These ports are connected to AIX and not to mainframes.
And yes Masking is done on the ports (the host used to see 'extra' luns and hence we found out that the VCM bit is disabled)

Marc,

Powerpath is not installed and it uses the AIX native MPIO.


Can it be done like this:

Mask these all luns to another FA (where vcm is enabled) ,Then unmask from this FA ,Enable VCM and then unmask from the old one.

Will this be a problem ???

2 Intern

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2.8K Posts

July 15th, 2008 05:00

We did it on a DMX800 .. When we installed the box, VCM was disabled (since all the storage was connected via switches to a single cluster) .. Later the customer asked to add more hosts on the same ports .. So we mapped the VCM on the ports and enabled the VCM flag just like Marc suggested. Right after activating VCM flag on a port we masked the devices to the host and verified that the paths was again available before moving to the next FA.

It went smoothly and worked fine (sometime it happens) ;-)

-s-

76 Posts

July 24th, 2008 00:00

;)

I enabled the VCM bit this monday morning and all went fine .

This was the plan I followed :

1. Verify the multi-pathing configuration of each affected host. This is to ensure that the host can remain 'up' while the change takes place. There should be at least 1 path to the storage
2. Bring the port offline on the switch which affects the FA port.
3. Bring Offline the FA port on the particular storage array.
4. Enable the VCM bit
5. Online the FA port.
6. Bring the switch port back online.
7. Ensure that the paths have returned.

;)

2 Intern

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2.8K Posts

July 24th, 2008 06:00

IMHO only one of steps 2 or 3 are required :D You've been too carefull !! :D
The same for steps 5 and 6 obviously ;-)

I hope you also masked the volumes previously seen by hosts ]:)

76 Posts

July 24th, 2008 21:00

Yeah,I was not just careful but scared too ;) ;)

null

2 Intern

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2.8K Posts

August 26th, 2008 03:00

It looks like you reached your goal .. Can you please mark this thread as answered and eventually mark best/better answers ?? :D

108 Posts

August 26th, 2008 06:00

hey how come ? ;-)

292 Posts

August 26th, 2008 06:00

Now I know how Stefano gets all his points ;)

2 Intern

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2.8K Posts

August 26th, 2008 06:00

You need to run faster then your competitors .. But you already know ;-)

292 Posts

August 26th, 2008 07:00

But based on the times of some of your answers, don't you need to sleep also? ;)

2 Intern

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2.8K Posts

August 26th, 2008 07:00

HAL doesn't need rest ..

HAL is programmed to mimic you, poor human beings ;-)

You should know that HAL is a brand new form of AS.
Artificial Intelligence is old. AS is the future :D
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