pslot validator / visualizer for Virtual SCSI and Virtual Fibre Channel slots in a PowerVM environment

pslot is a Perl program designed to anaylize, validate, and optionally visualize the VSCSI and Virtual Fibre Channel (VFC) slots in a PowerVM environment.

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Virtual Slots in PowerVM must be setup in pairs, and are very easy to misconfigure. Here is an example of a properly configured pair:
Each VSCSI or VFC client/server pair in made up of 8 items:

1. VIO server name (defined in server adapter)
2. VIO local slot (defined in server adapter)
3. Remote partition (defined in server adapter)
4. Remote slot (defined in server adapter)
5. LPAR server name (defined in client adapter)
6. LPAR local slot (defined in client adapter)
7. Remote VIO partition (defined in client adapter)
8. Remote VIO slot (defined in client adapter)
   

If one or more of the 8 items above are incorrect the client/server will not be able to establish a VSCSI or VFC connection.
The pslot program validates that every VSCSI or VFC adapter on server is correctly paired and that each of the 8 items line up correctly. If any virtual adapters don't line up with a corresponding adapter pslot will alert you.
pslot can run in either text mode or a Graphviz mode where it can produce visual representations of the VSCSI or VFC slots.
To run pslot you must put the script on a server that has SSH keys setup with your HMC. If you would like to do the optional visualization you will also need to have Graphviz installed. I recommend using Graphviz on Linux because it is in most distro's repositories and very easily installable. It is also possible to install Graphviz on AIX, but more difficult. See http://www.perzl.org/aix/ for AIX binaries of Graphviz.

pslot Screen Shots

Here is a screen slot of plot running in the text mode. You can easily grep for '^ERROR' to only see problems. In this example there is a misconfigured server/client pair (client should be pointing to vio2, not vio1). This misconfiguration causes the server/client adapters to not be paired correctly and to show an error:
Here is an example diagram created from the script in graphviz mode:
Here is a screenshot produced in graphviz mode when one of the VSCSI client/server slots is misconfigured:
Here is a screenshot showing that pslot understands VSCSI server adapters configured for 'any' remote parititon:
Here is a screenshot showing it in the 'left to right' mode ('-s' argument) which fits the screen better if you have a lot of LPAR's:
Here is a screenshot showing Virtual Fibre Channel adapters being displayed:

Installation / Use

Download the script from: https://sourceforge.net/projects/pslot/files/
You must run the script from a server that has SSH keys setup with your HMC.


When run in Graphviz mode ('-d' flag) it will produce DOT code that graphviz can turn in to a graph. If you would like to do the optional visualization you will also needto have Graphviz installed. I recommend using Graphviz on Linuxbecause it is in most distro's repositories and very easilyinstallable. It is also possible to install Graphviz on AIX, but moredifficult. See http://www.perzl.org/aix/ for AIX binaries of Graphviz.
You can run the script like this to create a graph:

Graphing with large servers / lots of LPAR's

If you are trying to graph a server that has more than 20or 30 LPAR's the graphs might get too big and not be veryhelpful. There is the '-r min-max' flag to specify slotpairs that have a certain range of VIO server slots. Usingthis you can break up a large server in to several smallergraphs. There is also the '-l lpar' option to graph asingle lpar.
Here are some example commands of breaking up a large server in to several smaller graphs:
./pslot.pl -h hscroot@hmcserver1 -m p520 -v -d -s -r 20-40 | dot -Tpng -o server1.png
./pslot.pl -h hscroot@hmcserver1 -m p520 -v -d -s -r 41-60 | dot -Tpng -o server2.png
./pslot.pl -h hscroot@hmcserver1 -m p520 -v -d -s -r 61-80 | dot -Tpng -o server3.png

Related scripts

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http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-aix-graphviz/index.html?ca=drs-
http://graphlvm.sourceforge.net/

About the author / Contacting the author

Script was written by Brian Smith. I have an IBM developerWorks blog at: Brian's AIX/UNIX/Linux blog
You can contact me at: ixbrian at gmail dot com

License / Disclaimer

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

Vio V Angeln Script

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License

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along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

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