Migrating the mobile partition with HMC

You can migrate an active or inactive logical partition from one server to another server by using the Partition Migration wizard on the Hardware Management Console (HMC).

1. In the navigation pane, click the Resources icon .
2. Click All Partitions. Alternatively, click All Systems. In the work pane, click the server name that has the logical partition. Click View System Partitions. The All Partitions page is displayed.
3. In the work pane, select the logical partition and click Actions > Mobility > Migrate.
   Follow the steps in the Migration wizard. When the mobile partition has virtual NIC (vNIC) adapters, during the migration validation, the HMC tries to auto-map a destination SR-IOV physical port by matched physical port label and port switch mode, and a destination hosting Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) for every vNIC adapter on the mobile partition. In the Virtual NICs page of the migration wizard, one of the following options is displayed:

   • If the HMC does not find any virtual NIC (vNIC) adapter mappings, the vNIC table is displayed without the mapping details.
   • If the HMC finds virtual NIC (vNIC) adapter mappings, the suggested mappings are displayed.

   In both the cases, you can change the vNIC assignments by clicking Modify. You can change the single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) physical port of the destination backing device, the destination hosting Virtual I/O Server (VIOS), or the destination capacity of the vNIC backing device. If you click Validate and if the changes cannot be validated, an error message is displayed. Alternatively, if you choose to directly run the migration wizard, without the validation task, the migration operation fails when the changed mapping cannot be validated. You must change the required settings and rerun the validation task or the migration wizard.

   When the mobile partition has vNICs and if one of the vNICs has more than one backing device, the Override vNIC backing device redundancy if necessary option is displayed in the Partition Migration window. The option indicates whether the partition mobility operation must continue in the following scenarios:

   • The auto-mapping operation cannot map all backing devices to the destination server. The auto-mapping operation might not be successful when the destination server does not support virtual NIC failover or when the destination VIOS that supports virtual NIC failover is not available.
   • The VIOS redundancy pattern of each virtual NIC is not maintained. If two backing devices of the source virtual NIC are hosted by different Virtual I/O Servers, their mapping must host the backing devices on two different Virtual I/O Servers for the redundancy to be maintained.
4. When the HMC is at version 9.10 or later, and the mobile partition has vNICs, the Override vNIC configuration if necessary option is displayed in the Partition Migration window. The option indicates whether the partition mobility operation must continue in the following scenarios:
   • The auto-mapping operation cannot map a target SR-IOV physical port for a vNIC backing device because the combination of the Port VLAN ID or Allowed VLAN IDs of the vNIC is not supported by any of the target SR-IOV physical ports, or the target physical port that you specified does not support the combination of the Port VLAN ID or Allowed VLAN IDs of the vNIC.

   • The auto-mapping operation cannot map a target SR-IOV physical port for a vNIC backing device because the number of allowed VLAN IDs or the number of allowed OS MAC addresses of the vNIC exceeds what is supported by any of the target SR-IOV physical ports, or the target SR-IOV physical port that you specified does not support the number of allowed VLAN IDs or number of allowed MAC addresses of the vNIC.

   • The auto-mapping operation cannot map a target SR-IOV physical port for a vNIC backing device because the source vNIC backing device is configured with a non-100 maximum capacity but none of the target SR-IOV physical ports support non-100 maximum capacity, or the user specified target SR-IOV physical port does not support non-100 maximum capacity.

   When you select the Override vNIC configuration if necessary check box, the HMC allows the migration by modifying the source vNIC or backing device configuration on the target system to conform to the target SR-IOV physical ports capabilities. Only the maximum capacity value can be restored when the partition is migrated back to a system with SR-IOV physical ports that support non-100 maximum capacity. The other modifications remain permanent. You can use the --vniccfg 2 attribute of the migrlpar command to achieve the same result as selecting the Override vNIC backing device redundancy if necessary check box on the Partition Migration window.
5. Complete the wizard.
   Tips:

   1. With HMC version 7 release 3.5.0, or later, you can select Override virtual storage errors when possible. Select this option when you want to migrate the mobile partition to a destination system with less redundancy.
   2. Where possible, the HMC version 7 release 3.5.0, or later, preserves the virtual slot assignments of the virtual server adapters on the destination system. However, in some situations the HMC might not be able to preserve one or more virtual slot IDs. In this situation, the HMC assigns available slot IDs. To override the assignments, migrate the mobile partition by running the migrlpar command from the HMC command-line interface.
   3. You can specify the IP address of the mover service partition (MSP) on the source server, the MSP on the destination server, or both. For example, you want partition mobility to use the fastest IP address available on an MSP. To specify the IP address of an MSP, the following products must be at the specified versions:
      • The HMC must be at version 7 release 3.5.0, or later.
      • The MSP for which you specify an IP address must be at Virtual I/O Server version 2.1.2.0, or later.
      To specify the IP addresses of the MSPs, migrate the mobile partition by running the migrlpar command from the HMC command-line interface.