DLPAR requirements? 5

[phorbiuz]

Hi there.

This may well be a numpty question so bear with me.....

We have a series of P520's and P570's managed from a HMC (V6 R1.3), running combinations of AIX 5.2 and 5.3. All machines run logical partitions but are not managed dynamically, ie whole units of CPU etc at a time and a physical shutdown and boot to complete and resource changes.

I'm recommending we take things a step further down the progress road here and get all boxes to a minimum of AIX 5.3 ML5 utilising dlpar.

Is there anything special we require before I put the recommendation forward? I'm thinking licensing costs, firmware levels, etc etc.

Thanks in advance.

 

[MoreFeo]

I think for DLPAR you don't need a special license like APV, this is for CPU micro-partitioning and VIO.
I think the only requirements for DLPAR is AIX 5.2 ML04 or higher, correct firmware level, and rsct daemons running and communicating with HMC. In HMC you must check "Partition communication" in the public ethernet adapter.

 

[khalidaaa]

I'm really not sure about what i'm gonna say but I think you need to watch for Oracle CPU licensing. I think once you use more than one CPU for Oracle, you will need to have that extra license per CPU.

Regards,
Khalid

 

[phorbiuz]

Thanks for the advice.

We'll be fine with the standard dlpar as I don't want to go down the VIO route yet - one step at a time as the saying goes. We'll also be fine with the AIX version, firmware updates if necessary, and rsct daemons. I don't know what you mean though about checking partition communication in the public ethernet adapter???

Oh, and I've found out I don't have to worry about licensing costs too which helps...

 

[p5wizard]

On HMC
->HMC Management
->Change Network Settings
->TAB "LAN Adapters",
->Details

But I'm not even sure it needs to be checked on. I don't have it, but am still able to do DLPAR ops. Perhaps because I have the HMC's public ethernet adapter and the LPARs in the same VLAN/subnet?

From help on HMC:
Partition communication

If available, specify whether or not this adapter is used for partition communication.

If selected, the adapter will be used as the primary adapter for the HMC to communicate with the LPAR using an RMC connection. If there is more than one network adapter on the HMC and the primary adapter's network is not working correctly, other network adapters will be used, in no particular order, to establish the RMC connection between the HMC and the LPARs.


HTH,

p5wizard

 

[chgwhat]

If you go to the HMC and select dynamic lpar if the option is there you already have that setup, If it is not the RMC connection is not there, I think the minimum Aix level for micro partition is Aix 5.3 ML4. RMC require network connectivity and host name lookup of the server for it to work.



Tony ... aka chgwhat

When in doubt,,, Power out...

 

[DukeSSD]

You are correct p5wizard, as always, the partition communication check box only specifies the preferred adapter, others will be used, if available and there is a communication problem over the preferred one, in any order. I have seen this in action.

 

[DukeSSD]

From the HMC command line you can check your DLPAR capability with the command:
lspartition -dlpar
A DCaps value greater than 0x0 for a partition means it is DLPAR capable.

If there is a partition that shows DCaps 0x0 and you want to fix it, check this doc:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/eserver/articles/DLPARchecklist.html

It was written for power4 which used hostnames but power5 only uses ip addresses so don't worry about the hostname resolution bits.

 

[phorbiuz]

OK. There's been some great advice here so far. As it happens a lot of this seems to be already complete, but they didn't know. I'm new here so hadn't checked myself previously and just took their word that it wasn't set up.

Checking the LAN adapters, there's 2. One is set to private using DHCP, the other is set to open with a fixed IP.

Checking the HMC for dlpar capability, clicking on 1 of the lpars shows the option for dlpar so that's good too.

The lspartition command shows all partitions as 0x3F.

And finally, a ps -ef on a partition itself shows a load of stuff running from the directory /usr/sbin/rsct/bin.

Thanks again.

 

[DukeSSD]

Yep, looks like you are good to go.

The private DHCP adapter, should be eth0, is connected to the service processor and provides the virtual terminal to the LPARs via the service processor and the vty device on the LPAR, it also reads and updates the partition profiles on the system, etc.

The public adapter is on the company LAN for you to connect via ssh or WebSM and is also used to connect the RMC on the HMC to the RMC on the LPARs to allow DLPAR operations, etc.

The DCaps value indicates you can move cpu, memory, I/O and PCI resources dynamically.