SAN Volume Controller Second HBA Virtualization Feature

An IBM Redpaper publication

Published 03 June 2014, updated 25 June 2014

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IBM Form #: REDP-5039-00
(26 pages)

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Authors: Christian Burns, Derek Rubright, Vairavan Sockalingam

Abstract

The IBM® SAN Volume Controller (SVC) software-defined storage is based on the IBM
System x3550 M3 hardware platform. The original SVC design provides high performance
and scalability with a single host bus adapter with four-port 8 Gbps Fibre Channel I/O.

Now, you can add a four-port 8 Gbps Fibre Channel host bus adapter (HBA) to the controller
(feature code AHA7). It is commonly referred to as the second HBA.

This feature is supported on machine type 2145, Model CG8, and it is mutually exclusive of
other supported features, such as internal solid-state drives (feature code 4500) and 10 Gbps
iSCSI-FCoE (feature code 4700). The second HBA option was introduced with the Fibre
Channel port masking capability in SVC Version 7.1.0.1.

In this IBM Redpaper™ publication, we describe how the second HBA is configured on the 2145-CG8 and how to
use Fibre Channel port masking.

Table of contents

SAN Volume Controller Fibre Channel host bus adapter feature
Benefits of more Fibre Channel I/O ports and port masking
Installation requirements
Card Installation
Port configuration
Host bus adapter addition use case
Troubleshooting port masking

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