Ok, i want to see what the general opinion is for an idea which i am considering.
The problem. - My company manage host and manage a number of pSeries systems, across multiple remote DC's. Some of the customer environments are small standalone servers which do not use a HMC, either because they do not have a need for partitioning, or because the cost of the HMC is prohibitive.
However, i feel that having a HMC is very useful for remote mgmt with features like remote console, concurrent firmware updates, call home etc.
So, my question is, how viable would it be to share a pair of HMCs, located in each DC which manage a number of different customers pSeries hosts ?
Here is how i see it.
For
1. Remote console
2. Concurrent Firmware
3. Remote system power down/up
4. IBM call home
5. Central management
6. Low costs
Against
1. Security concerns - common link between cust environments
2. HMC support limited network cards, therefore the network used for HMC to FSP communication on each customer server would need to share the same network. Would this matter ?
3. Where clients have different releases of AIX (6.1, 5.3, 5.2), could there be issues with HMC version compatibility (eg, Power 5 and Power 6 have different recommendations for HMC code)
Interested to hear your views.
Rgds
Alex
The problem. - My company manage host and manage a number of pSeries systems, across multiple remote DC's. Some of the customer environments are small standalone servers which do not use a HMC, either because they do not have a need for partitioning, or because the cost of the HMC is prohibitive.
However, i feel that having a HMC is very useful for remote mgmt with features like remote console, concurrent firmware updates, call home etc.
So, my question is, how viable would it be to share a pair of HMCs, located in each DC which manage a number of different customers pSeries hosts ?
Here is how i see it.
For
1. Remote console
2. Concurrent Firmware
3. Remote system power down/up
4. IBM call home
5. Central management
6. Low costs
Against
1. Security concerns - common link between cust environments
2. HMC support limited network cards, therefore the network used for HMC to FSP communication on each customer server would need to share the same network. Would this matter ?
3. Where clients have different releases of AIX (6.1, 5.3, 5.2), could there be issues with HMC version compatibility (eg, Power 5 and Power 6 have different recommendations for HMC code)
Interested to hear your views.
Rgds
Alex
