Which VIOS serves my Virtual FC adapters?

Chris Gibson October 2021

Starting with AIX 7.2 TL5 SP3 (and VIOS 3.1.3.00), AIX/Power system administrators can use an alternative to kdb for viewing VIOS "identifying info" from client AIX LPAR’s. i.e.

# cat /proc/sys/adapter/fc/fcs0/hostinfo

fcs0

VFC client adapter name : fcs0

Host partition name (VIOS) : vio1

VFC host adapter name : vfchost0

VFC host adapter location code : U9009.22A.7871D00-V3-C7

FC adapter name on VIOS : fcs2

FC adapter location code on VIOS : U78D3.001.WZS0AL9-P1-C8-T1

This will make tracking LPAR/VIOS changes during large migrations (for example, from P9 to P10 with LPM) a lot easier (and more reliable than kdb). It's a great addition.

This new feature is mentioned under the "VIOS Enhancements" section of the "PowerVM features in the new Power10 Servers" blog post from Pete Heyrman (from the IBM Power Hypervisor development team).

https://community.ibm.com/community/user/power/blogs/pete-heyrman1/2021/09/27/powervm-features-in-the-new-power10-servers?CommunityKey=71e6bb8a-5b34-44da-be8b-277834a183b0

Under the /proc/sys/adapter/fc directory you'll find some new procfs entries for each virtual fibre channel (fcsX) adapter.

root@cgaix # oslevel -s

7200-05-03-2136

root@cgaix # cd /proc/sys/adapter/fc

root@cgaix /proc/sys/adapter/fc # ls -ltr

total 0

dr-xr-xr-x 7 root system 0 Oct 04 16:13 fscsi3

dr-xr-xr-x 7 root system 0 Oct 04 16:13 fscsi2

dr-xr-xr-x 7 root system 0 Oct 04 16:13 fscsi1

dr-xr-xr-x 7 root system 0 Oct 04 16:13 fscsi0

dr-xr-xr-x 3 root system 0 Oct 04 16:13 fcs3

dr-xr-xr-x 3 root system 0 Oct 04 16:13 fcs2

dr-xr-xr-x 3 root system 0 Oct 04 16:13 fcs1

dr-xr-xr-x 3 root system 0 Oct 04 16:13 fcs0

In each of the fcsX directories you'll find a new entry named hostinfo.

root@cgaix /proc/sys/adapter/fc # cd fcs0

root@cgaix /proc/sys/adapter/fc/fcs0 # ls -ltr

total 0

prw-r--r-- 1 root system 0 Oct 04 16:16 hostinfo

You can "cat" this file to determine which VIOS is serving your virtual fibre channel adapter.

root@cgaix /proc/sys/adapter/fc/fcs0 # cat hostinfo

VFC client adapter name : fcs0

Host partition name (VIOS) : vio2

VFC host adapter name : vfchost2

VFC host adapter location code : U9009.22A.7891CA0-V3-C16

FC adapter name on VIOS : fcs1

FC adapter location code on VIOS : U78D3.001.WZS0AJN-P1-C8-T1

You can "cat" each fcsX/hostinfo entry to capture all of the VIOS/vFC adapter info for your LPAR. You may wish to create a little shell script that can display this information, for each entry, quickly. For example:

root@cgaix /usr/local/bin # cat lsviofcs

myfcslist=`cd /proc/sys/adapter/fc ; ls -d fcs*`

for i in $myfcslist

do

echo $i

cat /proc/sys/adapter/fc/$i/hostinfo

echo

done

root@cgaix / # lsviofcs

fcs0

VFC client adapter name : fcs0

Host partition name (VIOS) : vio2

VFC host adapter name : vfchost2

VFC host adapter location code : U9009.22A.7891CA0-V3-C16

FC adapter name on VIOS : fcs1

FC adapter location code on VIOS : U78D3.001.WZS0AJN-P1-C8-T1

fcs1

VFC client adapter name : fcs1

Host partition name (VIOS) : vio2

VFC host adapter name : vfchost3

VFC host adapter location code : U9009.22A.7891CA0-V3-C17

FC adapter name on VIOS : fcs2

FC adapter location code on VIOS : U78D3.001.WZS0AJN-P1-C8-T2

fcs2

VFC client adapter name : fcs2

Host partition name (VIOS) : vio1

VFC host adapter name : vfchost2

VFC host adapter location code : U9009.22A.7891CA0-V2-C18

FC adapter name on VIOS : fcs3

FC adapter location code on VIOS : U78D3.001.WZS0AJN-P1-C2-T1

fcs3

VFC client adapter name : fcs3

Host partition name (VIOS) : vio1

VFC host adapter name : vfchost3

VFC host adapter location code : U9009.22A.7891CA0-V2-C19

FC adapter name on VIOS : fcs4

FC adapter location code on VIOS : U78D3.001.WZS0AJN-P1-C2-T2

It is worth noting that you can prevent this information from being available to the client LPAR by changing the secure_va_info attribute on your 3.1.3.00 VIOS.

For example, if we were to change the secure_va_info value from no to yes, like so:

$ chdev -dev viosnpiv0 -attr secure_va_info=yes

viosnpiv0 changed

$ virtadapinfo -list

secure : yes

Then the client LPAR will see the following (Secure) output for that VIOS:

# cat /proc/sys/adapter/fc/fcs1/hostinfo

VFC client adapter name : fcs1

Host partition name (VIOS) : Secure

VFC host adapter name : Secure

VFC host adapter location code : Secure

FC adapter name on VIOS : Secure

FC adapter location code on VIOS : Secure

If your VIOS is not running the latest VIOS code, 3.1.3.00, you'll find that the "FC adapter name on VIOS" attribute will be blank e.g.

fcs0

VFC client adapter name : fcs0

Host partition name (VIOS) : vio2

VFC host adapter name : vfchost2

VFC host adapter location code : U9009.22A.7891CA0-V3-C16

FC adapter name on VIOS :

FC adapter location code on VIOS : U78D3.001.WZS0AJN-P1-C8-T1

Based on my tests, this new feature only stores information for AIX virtual fibre channel adapters and not VSCSI adapters. In that case you can still use the older, less reliable and unsupported kdb method (for both VSCSI or VFCS). Of course this may change at any time in the future.

e.g.

VSCSI

# echo cvai | kdb -script

read vscsi_scsi_ptrs OK, ptr = 0xF10009D5B0129E98

(0)> cvai

Executing cvai command

NAME STATE CMDS_ACTIVE ACTIVE_QUEUE HOST

vscsi0 0x000007 0x000000001A 0x0 vios2->vhost3

End of execution for cvai command

(0)> Executing q command

VFCS

# echo vfcs | kdb -script

read vscsi_scsi_ptrs OK, ptr = 0xF10009D5B0129E98

(0)> vfcs

Executing vfcs command

NAME ADDRESS STATE OPENED CH HOST_ADAP PHYS HOST

fcs0 0xF1000B01C0084000 0x0010 0x0001 8 Secure Secure Secure

fcs1 0xF1000B01C0088000 0x0010 0x0001 0 vfchost0 vios1