Activating a partition profile

You can activate a partition profile by using the Hardware Management Console (HMC). When you activate a partition profile, you activate a logical partition. The system commits resources to the logical partition based on the configuration in the partition profile and starts the operating system or software that is installed on the logical partition.

Before you begin

When you activate a logical partition by activating a partition profile, you must select a partition profile. A partition profile is a record on the HMC that specifies a possible configuration for a logical partition.

If you plan to activate a logical partition that uses virtual resources provided by the Virtual I/O Server, you must first activate the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) logical partition that provides the virtual resources.

If you plan to activate a logical partition that uses shared memory (hereafter referred to as a shared memory partition), you must first activate at least one VIOS logical partition that meets the following criteria:

  • The VIOS logical partition (hereafter referred to as a paging VIOS partition) must provide access to an available paging space device that meets the size requirements of the shared memory partition.
  • The paging VIOS partition must be assigned to the shared memory pool.

If the shared memory partition is configured with redundant paging VIOS partitions, activate both paging VIOS partitions before you activate the shared memory partition.

When you activate a shared memory partition and the shared memory pool does not contain enough physical memory required for activation, you can release to the hypervisor the physical memory that is currently assigned to other shared memory partitions that are shut down. The hypervisor can then assign the released physical memory to the shared memory partition that you want to activate.

When the partition profile contains a cable card, the partition activation fails. You must remove the cable card from the profile before you activate the logical partition, because a slot that contains a cable card cannot be partitioned.

About this task

To activate a partition profile by using the HMC, follow these steps:

Procedure

  1. In the navigation pane, open Systems Management > Servers, and click the system on which the logical partition is located.
  2. In the work pane, select the logical partition that you want to activate.
  3. From the Tasks menu, click Operations > Activate > Profile.
  4. If you want to install the VIOS software as part of the activation process of a logical partition, complete the following steps:
    1. Click Yes as the value for the Install Virtual I/O Server as part of activation process field.
    2. Select the partition profile that you want to use to activate the logical partition.
    3. Click OK.
      The Discovering Network Adapters window is displayed because it might take some time to load the network adapters.
    4. On the Install Virtual I/O Server page, select the VIOS installation source, and complete the required fields.
    5. Click OK.
      The installation progress pane displays the status of the VIOS installation in the progress bar. To view the details about the progress of the installation, click the Details tab.
    6. Click Close.
      A message is displayed that the VIOS installation was successful. If you selected NIM Server as the installation source, the NIM installation starts after you click Close in the installation progress pane. To view the progress of the NIM installation from a virtual terminal, click Popup Console. When the NIM installation is complete, a message is displayed that the installation was successful.
    7. Click OK.
    Note: If the Install Virtual I/O Server as part of activation process option fails repeatedly and the Installation of Virtual I/O Server failed. Please contact the system administrator message is displayed, you must type the installios -u command from the HMC command line to continue with the installation.
  5. If you want the HMC to open a terminal window or console session for the logical partition when the logical partition is activated, click Open a terminal window or console session.
    Note: This option is disabled when you select Yes as the value for the Install Virtual I/O Server as part of activation process field.
  6. If you want to use a keylock position, boot mode, or paging VIOS redundancy configuration that is different from the keylock position, boot mode, or paging VIOS redundancy configuration that is specified in the partition profile, complete the following steps:
    1. Click Advanced.
    2. Select the desired keylock position, boot mode, or paging VIOS redundancy configuration.
    3. Click OK.
  7. Click OK.
    If the logical partition that you want to activate is a shared memory partition and there is not enough physical memory in the shared memory pool by which to activate the shared memory partition, the Release Memory Resources window is displayed.
  8. Select shared memory partitions that are shut down until the available memory is equal to or greater than the requested memory and click OK.