HP XP P9500 Storage - Manual (Page 15)

1. Guest OS. RAID Manager needs to use guest OS that is supported by RAID Manager, and
also VMware supported guest OS (for example, Windows Server 2003, Red Hat Linux, SUSE
Linux). See
“Supported guest OS for VM” (page 11) .
2. Command device. RAID Manager uses SCSI path-through driver to access the command device.
Therefore, the command device must be mapped as Raw Device Mapping using Physical
Compatibility Mode. At least one command device must be assigned for each guest OS.
3. RAID Manager (RM) instance numbers among different guest OS must be different, even if
the command is assigned for each guest OS, because the command device cannot distinguish
a difference among guest OS due to the same WWN as VMHBA.
4. About invisible Lun. Assigned Lun for the guest OS must be visible from SCSI Inquiry when
VMware (host OS) is started. For example, the S-VOL on VSS is used as Read Only and
Hidden, and this S-VOL is hidden from SCSI Inquiry. If VMware (host OS) is started on this
volume state, the host OS will hang.
5. Lun sharing between Guest and Host OS. It is not supported to share a command device or a
normal Lun between guest OS and host OS.
6. About running on SVC. The ESX Server 3.0 SVC (service console) is a limited distribution of
Linux based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, Update 6 (RHEL 3 U6). The service console provides
an execution environment to monitor and administer the entire ESX Server host. The RAID
Manager user can run RAID Manager by installing “RAID Manager for Linux” on SVC. The
volume mapping (/dev/sd) on SVC is a physical connection without converting SCSI Inquiry,
so RAID Manager will perform like running on Linux regardless of guest OS. However, VMware
protects the service console with a firewall. According to current documentation, the firewall
allows only PORT# 902,80,443,22(SSH) and ICMP(ping), DHCP, DNS as defaults, so the
RAID Manager user must enable a PORT for RAID Manager (HORCM) using the iptables
command.
Restrictions on AIX VIO
Whether RAID Manager can function completely or not depends on how VIO client/server supports
virtual HBA(vscsi), and there are some restrictions in the case of volume discovery. The following
figure shows RAID Manager configuration on an AIX VIO client.
Figure 3 RAID Manager configuration on VIO client
The restrictions for using RAID Manager on AIX VIO are as follows:
Requirements and restrictions for VM 15