🟠 High   ⏱ 5–30 min  Last verified: 20 May 2026
Affected versions: IBM AIX 7.3

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents
  1. Symptom & Impact
  2. Environment & Reproduction
  3. Root Cause Analysis
  4. Quick Triage
  5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
  6. Solution – Primary Fix
  7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
  8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
  9. Rollback Plan
  10. Prevention & Hardening
  11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
  12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

Client LPAR loses access to vSCSI disks backed by VIOS Shared Storage Pool.

Environment & Reproduction

IBM AIX 7.3 LPAR exhibiting VIOS shared storage pool issues under standard PowerVM workloads.

ioscli lssp -clustername mycluster
lsmpio -ar

Root Cause Analysis

VIOS cluster quorum lost or repository disk failure suspends SSP I/O.

Quick Triage

Confirm scope with errpt, recent changes, and subsystem state via lssrc.

ioscli cluster -status
ioscli lssp -clustername mycluster

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Run cluster -status from each VIOS and inspect repository disk health.

ioscli cluster -status
lspv | grep caa
Illustrative mockup for aix-7.3 — aix73-b01-p022-diag
Diagnosis console for VIOS shared storage pool on IBM AIX 7.3 — Illustrative mockup — Progressive Robot

Solution – Primary Fix

Restore repository disk from a healthy VIOS and resync the cluster.

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ioscli cluster -repos -clustername mycluster -repos hdiskX
Illustrative mockup for aix-7.3 — aix73-b01-p022-fix
Remediation output for VIOS shared storage pool on IBM AIX 7.3 — Illustrative mockup — Progressive Robot

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Fail clients to alternate VIOS via NPIV until SSP is healthy.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Confirm subsystem returns to RUNNING state and errpt shows no new entries.

ioscli lssp -clustername mycluster
lsmpio -ar

Rollback Plan

Restore prior configuration from mksysb or alt_disk_install clone if the fix regresses.

ioscli cluster -rmnode -clustername mycluster -hostname vios2

Prevention & Hardening

Encode the fix in NIM customisation scripts and monitor via topas/nmon.

smit vios_maintain  # weekly cluster -status check

errpt LABEL=POOL_*; SSP quorum loss

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for aix-7.3.

View all aix-7.3 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

PowerVM VIOS Shared Storage Pool guide

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