I have a P650 with 8 processors, 16GB RAM, 4 146GB Hard drives, 4 HBAs,
and 4 Ethernet Adapters all of which are used to create 2 LPARs running
AIX 5.2-05. The HBAs are connected to a Fastt via 2 F16 switchesLpar 1
runs Oracle 8.3 and Lpar 2 runs Oracle 9i.
I have a couple of questions:

Question - 1)
With the hardware virtually split in the middle (2 internal hdisks, 2
Ethernet adapters, 2 HBAs) why would the second partition show only 4
hdisks per vpath where the first partition shows 8 hdisks per vpath.
ex. 1st partition lsvpcfg -
vpath0 (Avail pv vgOraSys) 6005076801810080380000000000002F = hdisk2
(Avail ) hdisk17 (Avail ) hdisk32 (Avail ) hdisk47 (Avail ) hdisk62
(Avail ) hdisk77 (Avail ) hdisk92 (Avail ) hdisk107 (Avail )
ex. 2nd partition lsvpcfg -
vpath0 (Avail pv vgLPOraSys) 6005076801810080380000000000003D = hdisk2
(Avail ) hdisk3 (Avail ) hdisk4 (Avail ) hdisk5 (Avail )

Question - 2)
Performance on the 2nd Partition is sporadic. for instance running a
process on Lpar 1 takes 5 minutes, but running the same process on Lpar
2 takes 30 minutes and is using 25% CPU.
All Configurations appear to be equal, and I am confident that my DBA
has Oracle configured correctly. I am seeing high wait times, but no
paging.

Thanks for any insight you can give me. If you would like to take this
offline my email address is mikev@beverlycorp.com

do you have hdisks there that are just not showing as part of the
vpath?
if so, there's a command addpaths which will add the second path into
the vpath device..

I do not think so. lspv shows all available hdisks and vpaths, and
lsvpcfg shows the same numbers of hdisks.

are all your hdisks on one path? lsdev -Cc disk will show you the
location code that the disks are connected to. i've seen the need to
run cfgmgr more than once to get devicesconfigured on a second path.

if they are split across paths, then it is most likely a zoning issue
on the san that your devices are not enabled to see the same number of
paths.

They are all on the same HBA according to the location code. How can I
force AIX 5.2 to reconfigure them? I have ran cfgmgr a number of
times, and it does not seem to help. Is there any danger in removing
the "transparent" device and run cfgmgr again to rediscover it? I have
multiple Oracle databases running on this system.
Thanks for your help

either your second hba is bad (did you run diag on it?), or it hasnt
logged into the san (try rmdev on the hba and then reconfigure), or it
is not configured within the san properly (check your san config).

dont know what you mean by transparent. if you mean the hba, try it -
see the second point above. if you mean any of the hdisks or vpaths,
you wont be able to while they are being used.