Monday, December 27, 2010

How to migrate EXP (EXP810) from one DS 4000 (4800) to other DS 4000 (4800)

Migration of EXP from one to other storage is possible.

Here is procedure:
IBM TotalStorage DS4000 - Hard Drive and Storage Expansion Enclosure Installation and Migration Guide
Chapter 6. Migrating expansion units containing hard drives

http://public.dhe.ibm.com/systems/support/system_x_pdf/gc26-7663-00.pdf

IBM Redbook - IBM AIX Version 7.1 Differences Guide

This IBM® Redbooks® publication focuses on the enhancements to IBM AIX® Version 7.1 Standard Edition. It is intended to help system administrators, developers, and users understand these enhancements and evaluate potential benefits in their own environments.

THE TSM SERVER 6.2.2 UPGRADE CAN DELETE DB2 INSTANCES - Manually upgrading server instances from Tivoli Storage Manager Version 6.1 to Version 6.2

During the upgrade to TSM 6.2.2, the installer attempts to determine the currently installed version of DB2 using the command 'db2level'. If the db2level command fails, the TSM server (including DB2) is then uninstalled and reinstalled rather than being upgraded. Uninstalling DB2 results in all DB2 instances being deleted. The deleted instances are not rebuilt post the upgrade.
The db2level command has been seen to fail with
        # LANG=C /opt/tivoli/tsm/db2/bin/db2level
        SQL10007N Message "-1390" could not be retrieved.  Reason
        code: "3".

Local fix:
Use the steps outlined in the technote:
        Manually upgrading server instances from Tivoli Storage
        Manager Version 6.1 to Version 6.2
        http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27018195
        to recreate the instances that were deleted.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Dynamic Tracking of Fibre Channel devices in AIX - PID change in Fibre Channel Fabric

Port identifiers (called PIDs) are used by the routing and zoning services in Fibre Channel fabrics to
identify ports in the network. All devices in a fabric must use the same PID format, so when you add
new equipment to the SAN, you might need to change the PID format on legacy equipment.

Many scenarios cause a device to receive a new PID; for example, unplugging the device from one
port and plugging it into a different port as part of fabric maintenance, or changing the domain ID
of a switch, which might be necessary when merging fabrics, or changing compatibility mode
settings.


AIX® 6.1 and higher supports dynamic tracking of Fibre Channel (FC) devices.
Previous releases of AIX required a user to unconfigure FC storage device and adapter device instances before making changes on the system area network (SAN) that might result in an N_Port ID (SCSI ID) change of any remote storage ports.

Friday, December 17, 2010

ghettoVCBg2 - Free alternative for backing up VMs in ESX(i) 3.5 and 4.x (no SSH console required!)

Are you looking for free backup solution for VMware? Then you are right here :-)
ghettoVCBg2 is the follow up release of the ghettoVCB backup utility which allows users to perform backups of virtual machines residing on ESX(i) 3.5/4.x servers using methodology similar to VMware's VCB tool. By incorporating highly constructive feedback from the VMware community and utilizing the existing VI API, ghettoVCB’s framework was completely rewritten to be harder, better, faster, stronger.

Source: VMware Communities
http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9843

Thursday, December 9, 2010

ANR0482W TSM - How to interpret and troubleshoot it

This article describes TSM warning message ANR0482W:
ANR0482W ANS1005E ANS1809W - Sessions terminating due to timeouts


Problem(Abstract)
ANR0482W, ANS1005E, and ANS1809W messages are encountered during Tivoli Storage Manager backup processing. This document explains the sequence of events that take place between the Tivoli Storage Manager client and server.
 
Symptom
ANR0482W ANS1005E ANS1809W messages are observed during client backup activity