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Status Delivered
Workspace AIX
Created by Guest
Created on May 13, 2016

RELATED IDEAS

Command to retrieve VIOS information etc. because kdb is unreliable and dangerous

I request to create one or more commands to be able to get information of vscsi- and vfc-host AND client adapters on lpars and vios which are currently available only via kdb.
kdb is slow, not reliable, dangerous and there is a "bug" in the kernel which occasionally prevents the user to get these information (see PMR 60900,077,724).
According to the development, this "bug" can not be fixed soon.
We need the information from the following kdb commands
cvai
vfcs
svCmdIni; svPrQs; svva (on VIOS)

Information should include
client/server adapter number
client/server adapter name
vios name
client lpar name
client lpar number
connection state
(both?) WWPNs of the vfcs client adapter
(if you can imagine more useful information here, please feel free to add them)

vfchost information on the VIOS is available with VIOS commands, but the output is also quite buggy (see also PMR 32472,077,724 and RFE 70179), so those information should be included too.

It is also desired to have commands to get effective values (not the ones in the ODM) of queue_depth, hcheck_interval, reservation_policy etc. which are also only available via kdb.

The output should be human and machine readable, e.g. have the option of a CSV output.

The commands shall be available on all currently supported AIX and VIOS versions. When it's technically possible (and ok from security point of view) the commands should be executable by non-privileged users... although root-only function acceptable too.

Feel free to discuss any part of this request in detail with me.

Idea priority High
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Dec 6, 2022

    Could you please share how the final solution was implemented in VIOS 3.1.3+

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Dec 2, 2022
    included in VIOS 3.1.3 and later
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Sep 1, 2020

    Any update? It's 3 years later...

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jan 24, 2017

    Here is the last note added for your reference

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jan 24, 2017

    .Here is the last note added for your reference.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Oct 3, 2016

    This RFE's Headline was changed after submission to reflect the headline of an internal request we were already considering, but will now track here.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Sep 19, 2016

    As promised in the last call with the customer, I investigated other methods to retrieve the VIOS name from the AIX client. Currently there is not an alternative method for retrieving this information from the AIX operating system (client). The recommended method for retrieving this and the other "platform infrastructure" information that is being requested is via the HMC (either directly on the HMC or remotely from AIX).

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jul 19, 2016

    Hi,

    >>Do you plan to remove the info commands from kdb?
    The VIOS information surfaced via kdb is under review.

    >>The HMC normally is on a management lan and can not be used for such purposes (this is primarily because of security reasons).
    Understood, it is not unusual for the HMC to be on a separate management-only LAN. The use cases cited in the RFE was information retrieval
    for system management purposes ("We use the mentioned commands to self-document our infrastructure and to be able to check for errors/monitor virtual adapters"). Since this LPAR is performing system management tasks, can it be added to the management network (or can these operations be performed on the HMC directly)?

    >>I don't see the information gained by such command as a security issue. Only vFC (or vSCSI) information are delivered. Compared to the (even >>read only) access to the HMC, this is far from being dangerous.
    Yes I do understand that not all customer environments or customer policies are the same. However this one is a basic core principle of multi-tenancy.
    eg. from the web:

    ??2. Thou shalt not allow tenants to see another tenant's metadata. Sometimes metadata can be just as sensitive as transactional data! Multi-tenant service providers must make sure that customers are logically or physically walled off from seeing the settings or user-defined customizations created by other customers.

    I'm also wondering if you have monitoring solutions (performance, events, etc) available to you and if so which ones? We have collaborated
    with several soluitons to surface end-to-end topology views of the PowerVM virtualized environment.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jul 19, 2016

    If this was meant seriously, then the mentioned kdb functionality had to be removed in the all AIX releases. Do you plan to remove the info commands from kdb? If not, they should work properly... or a command should be available to work around kdb.

    The HMC normally is on a management lan and can not be used for such purposes (this is primarily because of security reasons). Even when a connect would be possible, the information could be accessed only very slowly. So the recommended action is no option.

    I don't see the information gained by such command as a security issue. Only vFC (or vSCSI) information are delivered. Compared to the (even read only) access to the HMC, this is far from being dangerous.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jul 13, 2016

    Request: AIX command to retrieve VIOS information he VIOS

    Solution: The recommended solution is to access this information through the HMC

    # ssh user@hmc -c lshwres .... --topology

    Note: hscroot access is not required, HMC provides RBAC and Object Controls to enable appropriate level of access controls (ie read only, etc). HMC admin can setup access (user / group) to above command, then can ssh from the AIX LPAR to HMC, run command to get requested information.

    Additional notes:
    - A cloud or managed service provider environments (ie. multi-tenant) require that access to platform level information (including VIOS internals) should have some restrictions and not available by default to client VM's / LPARs (AIX, Linux, i)
    - Use of kdb is not recommended for Systems Management purposes, it is a debug tool intended only for problem determination

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     May 16, 2016

    Creating a new RFE based on Community RFE #88368 in product IBM AIX.

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