Directly attached SCSI support for a logical partition

Directly attached SCSI disk, tape, and optical devices are controlled by either the ibmsis device driver or the ipr device driver, depending on the storage adapter type. Refer to the I/O device table to determine which device driver your storage adapter utilizes. Refer to the PCI-X SCSI RAID Controller Reference Guide for Linux (Doc SA23-1327) for full documentation for both the ibmsis and ipr device drivers. This document contains information on how to configure directly attached disks, configure raid arrays, and perform error recovery and service.

Using the option to Display Disk Hardware Status in sisconfig, you see a model type for each directly attached SCSI device. You can determine if Linux has access to the disk by model number. If Linux does not have access to the disk, sisconfig can be used to resolve common disk errors. If sisconfig does not make the disk accessible to the logical partition, contact your next level of support.

Directly attached SCSI drives in a logical partition displays the following information:

Model	Description	Sisconfig task
020	Disk is unprotected and uncompressed.	Sisconfig is not needed.
050	Disk is unprotected and uncompressed.	Sisconfig is not needed.
060	Disk is compressed.	Disk should be initialized and formatted.
07x	Disk is parity protected.	Sisconfig is not needed.
08x	Disk is compressed and parity protected.	Disk should be initialized and formatted. Device parity protection should also be stopped.

Additional technical information on how to use the ibmsis utilities is included in a readme file with each download.

Certain Linux drivers are required before you can use the directly attached SCSI devices. Before you use ibmsis, verify you have the following Linux drivers:

Description	Module name
Low-level SCSI device driver	ibmsis
SCSI disk driver in base Linux kernel	sd.o
SCSI tape driver in base Linux kernel	st.o
SCSI CD-ROM driver in base Linux kernel	sr.o
SCSI driver in base Linux kernel	scsi_mod.o

Device parity protection
Device parity protection is a hardware availability function that protects data from being lost because of a disk unit failure or because of damage to a disk.

Parent topic:

Plan to run Linux in a logical partition