Configuring Third-Party Storage Devices

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Before configuring any third-party device, you must ensure that the device is supported by Oracle Solaris. For information about proper vendor and product IDs, modes, and settings required for the device to work with multipathing software, see your third-party user documentation or third-party vendor for information.

scsi_vhci is a core kernel module of Oracle Solaris I/O multipathing. Multipath access depends on a device-specific scsi_vhci failover operation modules (fops). The default is for the scsi_vhci code to automatically call a probe function to each fops module, looking for the first probe result that indicates the device is supported.

A probe implementation determines support based on some combination of scsi_inquiry data. A device with INQUIRY data indicating T10 Target-Port-Group-Support (TPGS) (also known as ALUA) compliance will use the standards-based TPGS fops module. For more information, see the scsi_inquiry(9S) man page.

For non compliant devices, a fops module probe will typically determine support based on a VID/PID match against a private compiled-in table. For more information about how to display the content of the table, see Displaying the List of Supported Devices.

The scsi_vhci.conf file supports a scsi-vhci-failover-override property, which allows you to add a supported symmetric device which is not listed in the table, or to disable multipath support for a device, or to override the probe process. For more information about how to add a symmetric device which is not listed in the table see, Configuring Third-Party Storage Devices.

For more information, see the scsi_vhci(7D) man page.

Before you configure third-party devices for multipathing, consider the following factors:

The device must support the REPORT_LUNS SCSI command, and SCSI-3 INQUIRY command VPD Device Identification Page (0x83).
You must know the vendor ID (VID) and product ID (PID) of the device. You can obtain them by using the format command followed by the inquiry option on your system. For more information, see the format(1M) man page.

How to Add Third-Party Devices

You can configure multipathing on third-party symmetric storage devices. In a symmetric storage device, all paths to the storage device are active and I/O commands can be issued through any path.

Become an administrator.
For more information, see Using Your Assigned Administrative Rights in Securing Users and Processes in Oracle Solaris 11.3.
Copy the /kernel/drv/scsi_vhci.conf file to the /etc/driver/drv/scsi_vhci.conf file.
Add the vendor ID and product ID entries to the /etc/driver/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 - The entries are separated by a comma (,) and the last vendor/product entry is terminated by a semicolon(;).

For example, to add a device from a vendor ACME with a product ID of MSU and a device from vendor XYZ with a product ID of ABC, you must add the following lines to the /etc/driver/drv/scsi_vhci.conf file.
```
scsi-vhci-failover-override =
"ACME    MSU", "f_sym",
"XYZ     ABC", "f_sym";
```
For more information about tuning the target disk driver properties, see Tuning Disk Target Driver Properties.
Save and exit the /etc/driver/drv/scsi_vhci.conf file.
Reboot the system.