The following sections describe the prerequisites, considerations,
installation mechanisms, and disk configuration types for a fibre-channel
boot operation on a pSeries host.
You must have the correct level of firmware, microcode, and operating system
for your adapter and host. For the most current information about hosts, feature
codes, firmware, microcode, adapters and switches for fibre-channel boot that IBM® supports,
see the Interoperability Matrix at http://www.ibm.com/servers/storage/disk/ds6000/.
Retrieve a list of supported host bus adapters (HBAs), firmware,
and device driver information for your host system and host adapter at http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/storage/support/config/hba/index.wss.
For additional SDD information see, IBM System
Storage™ Multipath Subsystem Device Driver User's Guide.
You can find this guide and the latest driver download at http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/storage/support/software/sdd.
Notes: - You must get the microcode from an IBM Web site.
- RS/6000® supports
fibre-channel boot with or without SDD. However, if you are using SDD with RS/6000 SP™,
you must install APAR IY37451.
- If you are using AIX® 5.1 the SP, PSSP must be at 3.2 with APAR IY22732
(included in PSSP 3.2 PTF 14).
- Before configuring a pSeries host for boot-support, ensure you have copy
of the devices.fcp.disk.ibm.rte file.
- You must define the root volume group (rootvg) for each host. When a volume
group is varied online, a reserve is placed on all disks in the group. For
rootvg, this group is not released. You cannot share a rootvg volume between
hosts even when you shut down all the hosts except one.
- You can create only one path to the rootvg volume during the installation.
- Mirror the storage unit rootvg so that base functions and reliability
of the operating system for the storage unit are not affected.
- If you use the multiboot, scanning for bootable disks takes much longer
with a large number of accessible storage elements in the Storage Area Network.