Configuring Third-Party Storage Devices: New Devices

Multipathing can be configured on third-party symmetric storage devices. A symmetric storage device is defined as a storage device in which all paths to the storage device are active and I/O commands can be issued through any path.

To Configure New Third-Party Devices

Perform the following steps to configure third-party devices if your system already has multipathing enabled. If your system has multipathing disabled, you can configure third-party devices while enabling multipathing as described earlier in this chapter.

1. Add the vendor ID and product ID entries to the /kernel/drv/scsi_vhci.conf file.

   The vendor ID and product ID are the vendor and product identification strings that the device returns in SCSI INQUIRY data. The vendor ID must be eight characters long. You must specify all eight characters even if the trailing characters are spaces.

   The product ID can be up to 16 characters long.

   scsi-vhci-failover-override =
   "VendorID1ProductID1", "f_sym",
   "VendorID2ProductID2", "f_sym",
   ...
   "VendorIDnProductIDn", "f_sym";

   Note that the entries are separated by the ’,’ character and the last vendor/product entry is terminated by the ’;’ character.

   For example, to add a device from a “ACME” vendor with a product ID of “MSU”, and to add a device from vendor “XYZ” vendor with a product ID of “ABC”, you would add the following lines to file /kernel/drv/scsi_vhci.conf:

   To add a device from a “XYZ” vendor with a product ID of “ABC”, you would add:

   scsi-vhci-failover-override =
   "ACME    MSU", "f_sym",
   "XYZ     ABC", "f_sym";

2. Save and exit the scsi_vhci.conf file.

3. Type stmsboot -u to start the reboot and configuration process.

   You are prompted to reboot. During the reboot, the /etc/vfstab file and the dump configuration are updated to reflect the device name changes.

4. If necessary, perform device name updates as described in Enabling and Disabling Multipathing.