Host Support And Multipathing; Supported Server Platforms; Supported Operating Systems; Clustering Support - IBM System Storage DS3500 Introduction And Implementation Manual

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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
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
80
IBM System Storage DS3500: Introduction and Implementation Guide
preferred controller ownership,
Draft Document for Review March 28, 2011 12:24 pm
as described in 3.3.6, "Logical drives and