Datasheet

5 IBM i hosted by VIOS

5.1 Virtual SCSI and Storage virtualization concepts

The IBM i storage portfolio now includes integrated SCSI, SAS or Solid State disk (SSD), as well

as FC-attached storage subsystems that support direct attachment to IBM i, as discussed in the

prior section. The capability to use open storage through VIOS extends the IBM i storage portfolio

to include other 512-byte-per-sector storage subsystems. The logical units (LUNs) or volumes

created on open storage are mapped through the FC fabric to VIOS. In VIOS the LUNs are

virtualized to the IBM i virtual client partition. Figure 4 illustrates both the physical and

virtualization components of the solution:

Figure 4: physical and virtualization components of the solution

VIOS has been used successfully for several years to virtualize storage, optical and networking

resources to AIX and Linux client partitions. Now IBM i joins this virtualization environment,

gaining the ability to use more types of open storage. From a VIOS perspective, IBM i is another

client partition; the host-side configuration steps are the same as for AIX and Linux clients. While

code changes were made in VIOS to accommodate IBM i client partitions, such as the disk sector

conversion from 512 bytes to 520 bytes, there is no special version of VIOS in use for IBM i. If

you have existing skills in attaching open storage to VIOS and virtualizing I/O resources to client

partitions, they will continue to prove useful when creating a configuration for an IBM i client

partition.