The zSeries connectivity support page lists all supported storage devices and SAN components that can be attached to a zSeries server. There is an extra section for FCP attachment:
http://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/connectivity/#fcp
The whitepaper ESS Attachment to United Linux 1
http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=tss1td101235
It is intended to help users to attach a server running an
Another whitepaper, Linux on IBM eServer pSeries SAN - Overview for Customers describes in detail how to attach SAN storage (ESS 2105 and FAStT) to a pSeries server running Linux:
http://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/linux/whitepapers/linux_san.pdf
Most of the information provided in these publications is valid for DS6000 attachment, although much of it was originally written for the ESS 2105.
Important Linux issues
Linux treats
Some Linux SCSI basics
Within the Linux kernel, device types are defined by major numbers. The instances of a given device type are distinguished by their minor number. They are accessed through special
device files. For SCSI disks, the device files /dev/sdx are used, with x being a letter from a through z for the first 26 SCSI disks discovered by the system and continuing with aa, ab, ac, and so on, for subsequent disks. Due to the mapping scheme of SCSI disks and their partitions to major and minor numbers, each major number allows for only 16 SCSI disk devices. Therefore we need more than one major number for the SCSI disk device type. Table
Table A-1 Major numbers and special device files
Major number | First special device file | Last special device file |
|
|
|
8 | /dev/sda | /dev/sdp |
|
|
|
65 | /dev/sdq | /dev/sdaf |
|
|
|
66 | /dev/sdag | /dev/sdav |
|
|
|
71 | /dev/sddi | /dev/sddx |
|
|
|
128 | /dev/sddy | /dev/sden |
|
|
|
129 | /dev/sdeo | /dev/sdfd |
|
|
|
135 | /dev/sdig | /dev/sdiv |
|
|
|
Each SCSI device can have up to 15 partitions, which are represented by the special device files /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, and so on. The mapping of partitions to special device files and major and minor numbers is shown in Table
314DS6000 Series: Concepts and Architecture