[Info-vax] Current limitations os VMS X86?

[Robert A. Brooks]

On 12/9/2023 4:47 AM, Stefan Möding wrote:
> Hi Hans!
> 
> Hans Bachner <hans at bachner.priv.at> writes:
> 
>> My latest informations says, that you can't use a shared SCSI disk as
>> a system disk when running under VMware.
> 
> That's also what I understand from the installation manual.  The
> clustering manual is also only referring to Alpha or Itanium.
> 
>> I think you *can* use a fibre channel disk as a shared system disk.
> 
> And this would be on bare metal or also on VMware (using a raw device
> instead of a VMDK)?

The only supported method to access fibre channel disks is if they
are served via MSCP.

Shared system disks are not supported on X86_64.

We are investigating ESXi's fibre channel passthrough mechanism, which would
allow direct access to fibre channel storage.  Booting, however, is a bit more
complicated, so if we do support this passthrough mechanism, the initial support
would be data-only.

We realize there are ways to get booting through fibre channel passthrough to 
work, but it takes some effort getting the relevant boot drivers in place.

-- 

                    --- Rob