InfoScale™ 9.0 SmartIO for Solid-State Drives Solutions Guide - AIX

Last Published:
Product(s): InfoScale & Storage Foundation (9.0)
Platform: AIX
  1. Introducing SFHA Solutions SmartIO
    1.  
      About SmartIO for solid-state drives
    2.  
      About SmartIO in an SFHA environment
    3.  
      About SmartIO in an Active/Active cluster environment
    4. About SmartIO in the AIX virtualized environment
      1.  
        Performing LPM in the SmartIO environment
    5.  
      About SmartIO in the Solaris virtualized environments
    6.  
      About the SmartIO caching profiler tool
  2. Using the SmartIO feature: use cases
    1. About SmartIO read caching for applications running on VxVM volumes
      1.  
        Required configuration for SmartIO read caching for VxVM volumes
      2.  
        Automatic caching for VxVM volumes
      3.  
        Setting up SmartIO read caching for VxVM volumes
      4.  
        Verifying the VxVM cache area and monitoring the caching
    2. About SmartIO read caching for applications running on VxFS file systems
      1.  
        Required configuration for SmartIO read caching for a VxFS file system
      2.  
        Automatic caching for VxFS file systems
      3.  
        Setting up SmartIO read caching for VxFS file systems
      4.  
        Verifying the VxFS cache area and monitoring the caching
      5.  
        Customizing the caching behavior
    3. About SmartIO caching on SSD devices exported by FSS
      1.  
        Status of cache areas when nodes leave or join the cluster
      2.  
        Setting up cache areas using SSDs exported by FSS
    4. About SmartIO write-back caching for applications running on VxFS file systems
      1.  
        Required configuration for SmartIO write-back caching for a VxFS file system
      2.  
        Setting up SmartIO write-back caching for VxFS file systems
      3.  
        Verifying the VxFS cache area and monitoring the caching (writeback mode)
    5. About multiple SmartIO cache areas for read and write-back caching on VxFS file systems
      1.  
        About the smartiocache option
      2.  
        Converting VxFS cache areas from one type to another
      3.  
        Setting up multiple cache areas on a system
      4.  
        Verifying the VxFS cache areas
    6. About SmartIO caching for Oracle databases on VxFS file systems
      1.  
        Prerequisites and configuration for using the SmartIO plug-in for Oracle
      2.  
        Setting default SmartIO caching policies for a database running on a VxFS file system
      3.  
        Setting SmartIO caching policies for database objects
      4.  
        Pinning and unpinning database objects
      5.  
        Enabling and disabling caching for the database
      6.  
        Listing cache policy details for the database
      7.  
        Listing cache statistics for the database
    7. About SmartIO caching for databases on VxVM volumes
      1.  
        Applying a SmartIO database caching template for a VxVM volume
  3. Administering SmartIO
    1.  
      Creating a cache area
    2.  
      Displaying information about a cache area
    3. Enabling or disabling caching for a data object
      1.  
        Enabling or disabling caching for a file system
      2.  
        Enabling or disabling caching for a data volume
    4.  
      Adding a device to the cache area
    5.  
      Pausing caching from a volume to a cache area
    6.  
      Removing a device from the cache area
    7.  
      Destroying a cache area
    8.  
      Setting the attributes of the VxVM cache area
    9.  
      Setting or changing the caching mode for a VxFS cache area
    10.  
      Flushing dirty data from a writeback cache area
    11.  
      Tuning the writeback caching
    12. Viewing the SmartIO cache statistics
      1.  
        Viewing the detailed caching stats for a VxVM cache area
      2.  
        Viewing the detailed caching stats for a VxFS cache area
  4. Troubleshooting and error handling
    1. Support for a persistent or 'warm' VxVM cache
      1.  
        Primary volume failure with a stale cache could cause possible data corruption
      2.  
        Migrating a cache during HA failover is not supported
    2.  
      Cache area is lost after a disk failure (3158482)
    3.  
      Cache is not online after a reboot
    4.  
      Recovering the write-back cache after a node failure
  5. Appendix A. Command reference
    1.  
      SmartIO command reference

Performing LPM in the SmartIO environment

If an array-based SSD is used, Live Partition Mobility (LPM) is supported with SmartIO caching. With direct attached devices (PCIe or SAS), LPM is not supported if SmartIO caching is enabled. If you need to perform LPM, you can use manual steps.

To perform LPM in the SmartIO environment

  1. To prepare the LPAR for the lLPM, perform the following steps:

    • Offline the cache area that is created inside the LPAR.

      Ldom1:/root# sfcache offline cachearea_name

    • Delete the cache area.

      Ldom1:/root# sfcache delete cachearea_name
  2. Remove the SSD device from the VxVM configuration so that the device can be unexported from the LPAR. 
    Ldom1:/root# vxdisk rm ssd_device_name
  3. Remove the SSD device from the operating system.
    Ldom1:/root# rmdev -dl os_ssd_device_name -R
    Ldom1:/root#  rmdev -dl flash_adapter_name
  4. Using the IBM HMC, remove the Flash adapter from the partition (leaving only storage accessed by virtualized NPIV adapters). Use the below command from HMC:
    hmc:~> chhwres  -r io -m lpar_name -o r -p client1 -l  21010121
  5. Move the partition using Live Partition Mobility.
  6. On the new server, attach a Flash adapter to the partition:
    Lpar1:/root# cfgmgr
  7. Discover the Flash adapter in VxVM:
    Lpar1:/root# vxdisk scandisks
  8. After the local PCIe device is available to the VxVM configuration, you can create the required SmartIO cache area.
  9. To live migrate back the LPAR from target frame to source frame, follow step 1 to step 8.