Hi all:

I am looking a little assistance with my current assignment...

I'll try to be as descriptive and terse as possible.

Environment:
AIX 4.3.3 ML10 with redundant Fibre channel connections to an ESS -
F20.
Web based Specialist interface to the ESS.

Situation:
1. All the shark space has been allocated to the 3 AIX boxes
2. We have now cleaned up alot of data. This has freed some vpaths on
one of the boxes.

My task is to deallocate the vpath resources on one of the boxes so
that we can reallocate it to another AIX box.

I believe the following are the steps to be taken:

1. remove the logical volume definition on the AIX box associated with
the vpath.
2. In Specialist, storage allocation - modify volume assignments -
unassign volume from target host based on Volume ID.

I have identified the Volume ID within specialist which is assigned on
the vpath which we want to remove.

Questions:
1. Can I simply remove them in that order or do I need to do any
additional steps (varyoff the vg before removing the lv)?
2. The vpath we want to remove off the AIX box is, in this case,
vpath8. We have 13 vpaths defined. Can I simply remove that vpath
without disturbing the others. (i.e. I hope that I don't need to
remove them all, and then add back in the ones I want...)

The next issue I see is that the Volume ID appears to be the same as
the LUN ID in the output of lsess. lsess output shows that particular
Volume ID/LUN ID assocaited with 4 disks in the array. On the AIX box
vpath description, it's associatedw with only 2.

My hands-on experience with ESS allocation is limited to allocating a
21 GB slice to an AIX box 6 months ago with a colleague.

I have been looking for and reading Redbooks and Redpapers on the ESS
and the Specialist interface, but I have not found anything specific
to the exact task I will be performing. I would be glad to supply
more details in private email if anyone is willing to give me a hand
via personal email.

Thanks in advance.

Bill
billgsc at hotmail dot com.