Parallel access volumes (PAV) is a storage server feature, that allows
to start multiple channel programs on the same DASD in parallel. It
defines alias devices which can be used as alternative paths to the
same disk. With the old base PAV support we only needed rudimentary
functionality in the DASD device driver. As the mapping between base
and alias devices was static, we just had to export an identifier
(uid) and could leave the combining of devices to external layers
like a device mapper multipath.
Now hyper PAV removes the requirement to dedicate alias devices to
specific base devices. Instead each alias devices can be combined with
multiple base device on a per request basis. This requires full
support by the DASD device driver as now each channel program itself
has to identify the target base device.
The changes to the dasd device driver and the ECKD discipline are:
- Separate subchannel device representation (dasd_device) from block
device representation (dasd_block). Only base devices are block
devices.
- Gather information about base and alias devices and possible
combinations.
- For each request decide which dasd_device should be used (base or
alias) and build specific channel program.
- Support summary unit checks, which allow the storage server to
upgrade / downgrade between base and hyper PAV at runtime (support
is mandatory).
Signed-off-by: Stefan Weinhuber <wein@de.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@de.ibm.com>
Stefan Weinhuber