IBM Power 570 and IBM Power 595 (POWER6 ... - IBM Redbooks

► iSCSI adapters
► Specific WAN/LAN adapters
Some System p existing enclosures or drawers use the Machine Type Model (MTM) naming
convention, such as the 7031-D24/T24 EXP24 Disk Enclosure and the 7311-D20 I/O
Expansion Drawer. In some cases, a System i existing enclosure can have a different feature
number and slightly different descriptive text used in documentation when the hardware is
almost identical.
Table 1-3 on page 14 lists the System i and System p I/O enclosure and rack enclosure
numbers, includes text descriptions, and indicates whether the enclosures are supported on
the POWER6 models. In the table, note that although some almost identical System i and
System p enclosures are listed together in the same row, there are technical detail
differences. For example, the System i enclosure supports IOP cards while the System p
enclosure does not.
The following items expand on these terminology and I/O configuration support
considerations.
► Disk physical sector size and operating system considerations
Disks attached to AIX, Linux, and IBM i operating systems have different sector formatting
requirements. The AIX and Linux disks have 512 byte sectors, and IBM i formatted disks
use 520 byte sectors. The additional sector bytes are used by IBM i as part of the
implementation of its object security. Because of the formatting differences, different
orderable feature numbers are used and different disk capacity values are listed, in some
cases for the same physical disk.
At the time of publication, the IBM i disk sector size also prohibits IBM i, that is using an
adapter owned by an IBM i partition, from accessing disk storage attached through a SAN
Volume Controller (SVC) and prohibits directly accessing storage servers other than the
DS6000 and DS8000 set of products.
When use of a DS4000 product or a SAN controlled by an SVC is required, the IBM
disks can be virtualized (served) through an AIX or IBM Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) partition,
which requires IBM i 6.1 release level on the client partition.
► HSL and RIO terminology
System i uses HSL, and System p uses RIO as different terms for the same I/O loop
attachment technology. The POWER5 and POWER6 technology systems use the second
generation of this technology, and thus HSL-2 or RIO-2 are the terms now used. In this
paper, we use RIO-2 in most cases. If you see HSL-2, remember that it is the same loop
technology as RIO-2.
Some earlier System p documents might also use RIO-G instead of RIO-2.
► 12x terminology
12x is a newer and faster technology, when compared to RIO-2 high speed I/O loop
technology. The 12 refers to the number of wires within the 12x cable. Potentially, 12x
technology offers up to 50% more bandwidth than HSL technology. The 12x loop
technology from IBM is based upon the participation of IBM with the InfiniBand® Trade
Association (IBTA). IBM 12x implementation is not 100% InfiniBand compliant. Therefore,
this paper does not use 12x and InfiniBand terms interchangeably.
I/O enclosures with RIO-2 adapters must be attached to a RIO-2 loop. I/O enclosures with
12X adapter must be attached to a 12x loop. RIO-2 and 12x enclosures cannot be mixed
on the same loop because they are not compatible. RIO-2 and 12x cables are different.
Chapter 1. Introduction to the POWER6 IBM Power System servers 9