InfoScale VRTSvxvm 8.0.2.1201 and higher (on Solaris) now supports the FC-IOR (Fibre channel IO resiliency) feature of SR-IOV with Solaris 11.4 SRU 56 and higher.

A supported hotfix has been made available for this issue. Please contact Veritas Technical Support to obtain this fix. This hotfix has not yet gone through any extensive Q&A testing. Consequently, if you are not adversely affected by this problem and have a satisfactory temporary workaround in place, we recommend that you wait for the public release of this hotfix.

Veritas Technologies LLC currently plans to address this issue by way of a patch or hotfix to the current version of the software. Please note that Veritas Technologies LLC reserves the right to remove any fix from the targeted release if it does not pass quality assurance tests. Veritas’ plans are subject to change and any action taken by you based on the above information or your reliance upon the above information is made at your own risk.

Please contact your Veritas Sales representative or the Veritas Sales group for upgrade information including upgrade eligibility to the release containing the resolution for this issue.
 

Patch ID: 8.0.2.1202

* 4133452 (Tracking ID: 4086686)

SYMPTOM:
Infocale doesn't support Oracle Solaris FibreChannel I/O Resiliency(SRIOV).

DESCRIPTION:
Infocale doesn't support Oracle Solaris FibreChannel I/O Resiliency(SRIOV).

RESOLUTION:
The code changes have been added to support for Oracle Solaris FibreChannel I/O Resiliency(SRIOV).

 

The VRTSvxvm 8.0.0.1202 hotfix solution was developed in connection with Oracle Engineering to support SR-IOV functionality.
 

Note: Veritas does not support the FC-IOR (Fibre channel IO resiliency) feature of SR-IOV with Storage Foundation (6.2.1.x and below) and InfoScale product releases 7.x and 8.0.0 versions.

What is SR-IOV?

Single Root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) is a PCI based I/O virtualization feature that helps to create Virtual Functions (VFs) which share resources of Physical Function (PF).

With SR-IOV support, multiple Virtual Functions can be created on a single physical host bus adapter (HBA) port, wherein each VF works as a physical HBA device.

This enhances the utilization of existing HBA adapters and reduces the cost by decreasing the number of HBA adapters and FC switch ports required.

The SR-IOV feature is NOT supported with any Veritas LDOM deployment vehicle or infrastructure.
 

Support for the below configurations with SRIOV enabled are not supported:

■ Guest-based Storage Foundation stack
■ Layered Storage Foundation stack

Recommendations:

The SR-IOV feature removes the requirement for the InfoScale software to be installed in the LDOM I/O Domains, such as Primary and Alternate (Secondary) domains.

Sample output
 

# ldm list-io | egrep 'BUS|PCIE’
NAME                                       TYPE   BUS      DOMAIN    STATUS
/SYS/MB/CM0/CMP/IOS0                       BUS    pci_1    primary   IOV
/SYS/MB/CM0/CMP/IOS1                       BUS    pci_0    primary   IOV
/SYS/MB/CM1/CMP/IOS0                       BUS    pci_3    sdom      IOV
/SYS/MB/CM1/CMP/IOS1                       BUS    pci_2    sdom      IOV

Note: If the IOV flag is shown with the “ldm list-io” command, SR-IOV is enabled:


Virtual functions can be created from the Physical functions presented from each I/O domain when the IOV flag has been set.

The IOVNET string indicates that the device is either a network SR-IOV physical function (PF) or virtual function (VF) device
The IOVFC string indicates the device is either a Fibre Channel SR-IOV physical function (PF) or virtual function (VF) device

When SR-IOV is enabled, SAN attached disks can be mapped directly to the LDOM Guest where SR-IOV is enabled with IOVFC virtual functions associated with the LDOM Guest.

Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) and Dynamic Multi-pathing (DMP) are required within the LDOM Guest domains.


SR-IOV Disabled

Where SR-IOV is not enabled, Veritas recommends using traditional LDOM configurations managed by Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) and Dynamic Multi-pathing (DMP) across all I/O (Control & Alternate) domains for the VDSDEV backend devices and Virtual disks.

With SR-IOV disabled, users will still need to create vdsdev (backend) and virtual disks from all I/O domains for each LDOM Guest:

Sample syntax

From Control (Primary) Domain:

CDOM # ldm add-vdsdev /dev/vx/dmp/3pardata0_1533s2 pri-3pardata0_1533@primary-vds0
CDOM # ldm add-vdisk timeout=25 alt-3pardata0_1533 pri-3pardata0_1533@primary-vds0 ldom2


Solaris 11.4 and higher is recommended for I/O domains and LDOM Guests.

• MPGROUPs are not supported by Solaris 11.x LDOM Guests
• Solaris MPxIO is not supported across the LDOM estate (I/O Domains or LDOM Guests)