IBM DS3500 - Host Support and Multipathing; Supported Server Platforms; Supported Operating Systems; Clustering Support

7914DS3KPlanning_090710.fm Draft Document for Review March 28, 2011 12:24 pm
80 IBM System Storage DS3500: Introduction and Implementation Guide
3.6 Host support and multipathing
Our intent in this section is to list the most popular supported operating system platforms and
topologies. For a complete and up-to-date list, see the DS3500 series interoperability matrix,
available at:
http://www-01.ibm.com/systems/support/storage/config/ssic/index.jsp
In 3.6.4, “Multipathing” on page 80, we discuss the available multipathing drivers as well as
their supported operating systems.
3.6.1 Supported server platforms
The following server platforms are supported:
򐂰 IBM System x
򐂰 IBM System p
򐂰 IBM BladeCenter
򐂰 HP (Intel)
3.6.2 Supported operating systems
At the time of publication, the following operating systems are supported:
򐂰 Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP2
򐂰 Microsoft Windows Server 2008 SP2
򐂰 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4
򐂰 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1
򐂰 Novell SUSE SLES 10 SP3
򐂰 Novell SUSE SLES 11
򐂰 VMware ESX 4.0
򐂰 IBM AIX V6.1 TL5
򐂰 HP-UX 11iv2 (11.23) and HP-UX 11iv3 (11.31)
3.6.3 Clustering support
The following clustering services are supported:
򐂰 Microsoft Cluster Services
򐂰 HP Service Guard manager 11.18.00
3.6.4 Multipathing
IBM offers various multipath drivers that you can use with your DS3500 Storage System. Only
one of these drivers is required. Each driver offers multipath support, I/O load balancing, and
automatic path failover.
The multipath driver is a proxy for the real, physical-level HBA drivers. Each multipath driver
hides from the application the fact that there are redundant connections by creating a virtual
device. The application uses this virtual device, and the multipath driver will connect the
application to the correct physical path.
When you create a logical drive, you assign one of the two active controllers to own the logical
drive (called
preferred controller ownership, as described in 3.3.6, “Logical drives and
controller ownership” on page 63) and to control the I/O between the logical drive and the
application host along the I/O path. The preferred controller normally receives the I/O