Datasheet

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10 DS5000 direct attachment to IBM i
10.1 Overview
IBM i has been able to connect to 512-byte-per-sector open storage through VIOS since early
2008 and the solution is implemented in many production environments. On October 2009, IBM
further simplified open storage use for IBM i by announcing direct FC attachment to the DS5100
and DS5300 subsystems. With the new enhancement, the IBM i LPAR owns one or more FC
adapters, which are connected to the SAN fabric. 512-byte LUNs on the DS5100 or DS5300 are
then mapped to the world-wide port names (WWPNs) of the FC adapter(s) in the IBM i LPAR.
VIOS is no longer required in this case. Note that one or more VIOS LPARs may still exist on the
same Power server to take advantages of other technologies, such as Active Memory Sharing
(AMS), NPIV, LPM for AIX and Linux or other I/O virtualization. However, VIOS is no longer
required in order for IBM i to use storage from DS5100 and DS5300 system. For example, it is
possible to have the same or another IBM i LPAR on the same Power server and still use VIOS
for optical virtualization.
A note on terminology: while the new enhancement is referred to as direct attachment of IBM i
to DS5100 and DS5300, IBM expects that in most cases the attachment will be through a FC
switch. While directly attaching FC cables from the adapters on the Power server owned by IBM i
to the host channel ports on the storage is supported, this approach decreases the flexibility of
the SAN environment. Therefore, direct attachment in this case refers to without VIOS.
There are two main benefits of directly attaching IBM i to DS5100 and DS5300 systems:
 VIOS skills are not required to implement and use the solution, only IBM i and SAN skills
are required.
 The processor, memory, I/O and software expenditure to run a VIOS LPAR is not
required
Multipath I/O for IBM i in this environment is supported with a maximum of eight paths. No
additional software on the DS5100 or DS5300 systems or IBM i is required. The IBM i FC
adapter driver employs the round-robin algorithm by default; it cannot be changed.
10.2 Supported hardware and software
As of the publication date, only the following hardware is supported for IBM i directly attaching to
DS5100 and DS5300 systems. This support is also reflected in the “IBM i using open storage
supported configurations” section.
 DS5100 (machine-type 1818, model 51A)
 DS5300 (machine-type 1818, model 53A)
 EXP810 expansion unit
 EXP5000 expansion unit
 EXP5060 expansion unit
 FC and SATA HDDs (hard disk drives), with FC drives recommended for production
workloads
 POWER6 processor-based or higher Power servers
 FC #5273 4Gb dual-port PCI-e FC adapter
 FC #5276 8Gb dual-port PCI-e FC adapter
 FC #5774 4Gb dual-port PCI-e FC adapter
 FC #5735 8Gb dual-port PCI-e FC adapter