Required versions of AIX and Reliable Scalable Cluster Technology (RSCT)

PowerHA® SystemMirror® requires specific versions of AIX® and RSCT and requirements for upgrading the AIX operating system.

Requirements for upgrading AIX

Before you upgrade to a new version of the AIX operating system, review the following information:

  1. Ensure that your adapter node numbers for all shared SCSI disk are not the same on each node. During an operating system upgrade, SCSI disk adapters are reset to the default value of 7. This setting can cause a conflict on the bus that prevents correct access to the shared disk.
  2. Disable importation of volume groups. All volume groups are imported and varied on, on the node that is being upgraded. This causes loss of disk access by other nodes in the concurrent resource group in the cluster.

    To prevent this disruption when migrating, use the option to disable importation of volume groups.

  3. If you are planning to upgrade the AIX operating system at the same time as installing the PowerHA SystemMirror software, perform the AIX upgrade first.
    If you are migrating from an environment using SNMP v.1, then before migrating PowerHA SystemMirror, execute the following series of commands:
    stopsrc -s snmpd

/usr/sbin/snmpv3_ssw -1

startsrc -s snmpd
  4. If you are migrating from an earlier version of AIX, the SNMP version might have been version 1. The default SNMP version is SNMP v3. You should migrate from and to the same version of SNMP to ensure that SNMP-based applications function correctly. After the migration has completed, you can switch to a different version of SNMP if you prefer. For example, if you are migrating from an environment that is using SNMP v.1, and you are upgrading to AIX 6.1, then before migrating PowerHA SystemMirror, execute the following series of commands: stopsrc -s snmpd /usr/sbin/snmpv3_ssw -1 startsrc -s snmpd 6. SNMP Version 3 has some differences from Version 1.

Required AIX filesets

The following AIX filesets are required for PowerHA SystemMirror:

  • bos.cluster.rte
  • bos.ahafs
  • bos.clvm.enh
  • devices.common.IBM.storfwork

Required RSCT filesets

The required versions of the RSCT filesets are installed automatically by default when you install AIX 6.1 with 6100-06, or later, or AIX Version 7.1, or later.

Install the RSCT filesets before installing PowerHA SystemMirror. Verify that each node has the same version of RSCT.

To determine if the appropriate filesets are installed and their levels, issue the following commands:

/usr/bin/lslpp -l rsct.core.rmc

/usr/bin/lslpp -l rsct.basic

/usr/bin/lslpp -l rsct.compat.basic.hacmp

/usr/bin/lslpp -l rsct.compat.clients.hacmp

If these filesets are not present, install the latest version of RSCT filesets.