Originally posted by: tranbuuphat

Hi all,

In my system, I have HMC 7 with Power Machine 6 & 7. On the managed system, we have many lpars.
In some lpars, I can see they are using virtual fiber channel to connect to DS8K storage. In search with google, I understand that it is configured with VIOS server to share the physical FC channel with NPIV method.

But the situation is, in the same managed system, there are other lpars have physical FC, the WWpN not starting with C.
So my concern is, what method these lpars use to connect to SAN? How can they can "share/use" the physical FC without VIOS virtual FC?

lpar has virtual FC channel
[root@xxxxxx] / > lsdev -Cc adapter | grep fcs
fcs0 Available 02-00 8Gb PCI Express Dual Port FC Adapter (df1000f114108a03)
fcs1 Available 02-01 8Gb PCI Express Dual Port FC Adapter (df1000f114108a03)
fcs2 Available 04-00 8Gb PCI Express Dual Port FC Adapter (df1000f114108a03)
fcs3 Available 04-01 8Gb PCI Express Dual Port FC Adapter (df1000f114108a03)
fcs4 Available 06-00 8Gb PCI Express Dual Port FC Adapter (df1000f114108a03)
fcs5 Available 06-01 8Gb PCI Express Dual Port FC Adapter (df1000f114108a03)

Lpar has "physical" FC channel
[root@xxxxx] / > lsdev -Cc adapter | grep fcs
fcs0 Available 00-00 8Gb PCI Express Dual Port FC Adapter (df1000f114108a03)
fcs1 Available 00-01 8Gb PCI Express Dual Port FC Adapter (df1000f114108a03)
fcs2 Available 01-00 8Gb PCI Express Dual Port FC Adapter (df1000f114108a03)
fcs3 Available 01-01 8Gb PCI Express Dual Port FC Adapter (df1000f114108a03)
fcs4 Available 05-00 8Gb PCI Express Dual Port FC Adapter (df1000f114108a03)
fcs5 Available 05-01 8Gb PCI Express Dual Port FC Adapter (df1000f114108a03)

Both lpars below belongs to 1 power machine 6.

Please advise me on this situation.

Originally posted by: DukeAh

For the virtual FC you have i'd expect to maybe see the description as Virtual Fibre Channel Client Adapter. Are you sure the lpars using the physical adapters aren't just dedicated lpars outside of PowerVM? Or maybe they are using disks from a shared storage pool from the VIO and are just assigned the physical HBA but not using them. The command `lspath` should show what adapter the disks are using. The other options is they are virtual hosts using shared CPU,Network, and/or Memory resources but using a dedicated HBA adapter. That would prevent the host from using LPM but technically the virtual host could use the physical i/o adapter instead of the VIOS having the physical adapter and use NPIV or shared storage pool. 

I'm sure there are a few ways to go about this but if you use lspath to get the device the hdisk is using, then use `lscfg -vpl fcs*` where * is the number, check the network address which is the WWPN as well as the physical location. You could maybe map that physical location back to the HMC and see how that host is configured. I'd also expect to see something like vfc-client in the lscfg of the device. 

Only HBAs assigned to the VIO servers can be used for NPIV. If the HBA is assigned to the lpar then it is just a direct connection to the SAN.

I hope this helps. 

Originally posted by: jpc@pt.ibm.com

They're not sharing.  Those are different cards (as you can see by the location codes).