FA bit setting

Different operating systems need to have the scsi target & luns presented in different ways. This is a requirement of the respective platforms.

e.g. Solaris and Windows use peripheral addressing, HPUX uses volume set addressing.

Thanks for the reply ,

what if a user have limited FA and want to assign different type of Platforms likes
Solaris,Windows, HP,AIX,Linux , on the same FA . Is it Possible or he has to have Separate FA for each Platform.

take a look at this discussion:

http://forums.emc.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=55294&tstart=50

Yes it is possible to have different platforms on the same FA.

Have a look at the link which dynamox has posted, it has more detail on this.

Credit why don't you considere giving credit to correct and helpfull answers ??

In short the following command will work as understood from the thread.

symmask -sid xxxx set hba_flags on V -disable -wwn yyyyyyyyyyyy -dir 13d -p 0

Does that clarify NOT having a dedicated port to a a particular OS line Linux? What i understood is we need to keep that dedicated.


Could some one correct me if i am wrong?

Since S.E. 5.x and codes 5568, you can share the same port between different host "flavours".
At the very beginning you had "symmask set heterogeneous on..." that allowed you to choose a different "profile" for a given WWN. You had a list of fixed profiles. If your host don't have a profile, you have to configure a FA port for the "unprofiled" host and use "heterogeneous on" for all other "profiled" hosts. If you have two different "unprofiled" hosts you need two different FA ports.

Recent codes (and S.E. 6.4) introduced the "set hba_flags" feature. This groundbreaking feature allows you to turn on or off every single flag for every single wwn (i.e. for every single initiator/host). Now you can share any host since you have the power to "create" your own profile and define the correct flags for every wwn/initiator/host.

If you have SE 6.4 or higher, use hba_flags and mix your Linux/Solaris/AIX/HPUX/Windows host at your will

You still have restrictions on the lun number you choose and the lun number that your hosts can "see" .. but it's a completly different world from fa_flags

That's the whole point: our CE did everything for us. The DMX is now as-is and we don't change settings (much). The only thing we need to take into account is the heterogenious thingy whenever we need an UX to be able to talk to the DMX.

i am curious ..did you enable V bit on the FAs ?

hey Stefano,

since you have HPUX boxes ..how do you share FAs with other platforms. For example if i have the V bit enabled on the FA all my mapping has to be done by using VBUS, Target and Lun ...but how will windows/linux/aix see those LUNs ? This is the confusing part in my head integrating HPUX and other platforms that use regular LUN address and not VBUS.

I'm not exactly sure how we did it, but in general we set up our FA's as usable for Wintel and AIX and for HPUX we had to do the "heterogenious setting" through the masking command for the wwpn's of that HPUX machine. It works great !

So either way 1E is never visible ? (With or withour V-bit)

If V-bit is enabled, you can't map a symdev as either lun 1E or E. It's illegal.

If 1E means vbus=0, tgt=1, lun=E, it's illegal since Vbit requires a lun value between 0 and 7.

So if you want to mix hosts on the same FA, you disable the V-bit and you can map anything you want, but you have to look out not to map and try to mask 1E to UX ? I think this is the easiest way and that's how we do it

Rob the issue is with mapping. If yuo have Vbit enabled on the FA, you CAN NOT MAP a volume at address 0x01E (vbus=0, tgt=1, lun=E).

If Vbit is disabled, you CAN map a device as lun 0x01E however an HPUX host will NEVER EVER see it. Maybe you can "adjust" the things with lun-offset .. but you have a single offset for every HBA. So the solution may be worst then the problem

Message was edited by:
Stefano Del Corno

I don't really know what "issie" is .. Maybe it was an issue

Message was edited by:
Stefano Del Corno