You can create a virtual target device on a Virtual I/O Server that maps the
virtual Small Computer Serial Interface (SCSI) adapter to a file-backed
virtual optical device.
The following procedure can be repeated to provide additional
virtual disk storage to any client logical partition.
Before
you start, complete the following steps:
- Ensure that the Virtual I/O Server is
at Version 1.5 or later. To update the Virtual I/O Server, see Updating the Virtual I/O Server.
- Ensure that the virtual adapters for the Virtual I/O Server and the client
logical partitions are created. This usually occurs during the creation
of the logical partition profile. For information about creating the
logical partition, see Installing the Virtual I/O Server and client logical partitions.
Tip: If you are using the HMC, Version 7 release
3.4.2 or later, you can use the HMC graphical interface
to create a virtual target device on the Virtual I/O Server.
To
create a virtual target device that maps a virtual SCSI server adapter
to a file-backed virtual optical device, complete the following steps
from the Virtual I/O Server command-line
interface:
- Use the lsdev command to ensure that
the virtual SCSI adapter is available. For example, running lsdev
-virtual returns results similar to the following:
name status description
ent3 Available Virtual I/O Ethernet Adapter (l-lan)
vhost0 Available Virtual SCSI Server Adapter
vhost1 Available Virtual SCSI Server Adapter
vsa0 Available LPAR Virtual Serial Adapter
vtscsi0 Available Virtual Target Device - Logical Volume
vtscsi1 Available Virtual Target Device - File-backed Disk
vtscsi2 Available Virtual Target Device - File-backed Disk
- To create a virtual target device, which maps the virtual
SCSI server adapter to a file-backed virtual optical device, run the mkvdev command:
mkvdev -fbo -vadapter VirtualSCSIServerAdapter
where VirtualSCSIServerAdapter is
the name of the virtual SCSI server adapter. For example, vhost1.Note: No
backing device is specified when creating virtual target devices for
file-backed virtual optical devices because the drive is considered
to contain no media. For information about loading media into a file-backed
optical drive, see the loadopt command.
The optical device is available to the client
logical partition either the next time it starts, or the next time
the appropriate virtual SCSI client adapter is probed (on a Linux logical partition),
or configured (on an AIX® logical
partition), or appears as an OPTXXX device (on
an IBM® i logical
partition).
- View the newly created virtual target device by running
the lsdev command. For example, running lsdev
-virtual returns results similar to the following:
name status description
vhost4 Available Virtual SCSI Server Adapter
vsa0 Available LPAR Virtual Serial Adapter
vtopt0 Available Virtual Target Device - File-backed Optical
- View the logical connection between the newly created devices
by running the lsmap command. For
example, running lsmap -vadapter vhost1 returns results
similar to the following:
SVSA Physloc Client PartitionID
----------------------------------------------------
vhost1 U9117.570.10C8BCE-V6-C2 0x00000000
VTD vtopt0
LUN 0x8200000000000000
Backing device Physloc
The physical location is a combination
of the slot number, in this case 2, and the logical partition ID.
The virtual device can now be attached from the client logical partition.
You can use the
loadopt command to load
file-backed virtual optical media into the file-backed virtual optical
device.
If you later need to remove the virtual target device,
you can do so by using the rmvdev command.
