If you are running Systems Director and upgrading to the new version ... WATCH OUT !! Make sure you have 1 GB free space in /var  Make sure you have 2 GB free space in /tmp I did not, this upgrade script does not check for free space and it crashed during the Systems Director updating itself (/tmp 100% full) and it never came back.  I ended up with a corrupt Systems Director. The smart guys would (before the upgrade) also stopped Systems Director  (smstop) and saved the database (smsave) before attempting the upgrade - so the older version... [More]

Tags:  /var aix /tmp systems director upgrade

If you are migrating work from an older POWER5 or POWER6 machine/LPAR to POWER7 ... don't forget to check that those Java versions are compatible with POWER7 or you may hit "unexpected Java errors" The approved Java SDK on POWER7 are limited to particular versions with specific fixes . They can be found here: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/power7/index.html Harder to check are the Java versions which are embedded in applications. Here are two important ones for IBM software: There is a technical bulletin regarding... [More]

Tags:  java aix power power7 migration systems

The new November Update is available from the download site from the regular website: http://www.ibm.com/systems/software/director/downloads/index.html When you have 6.2 or 6.2.0.1 installed get Systems Director to update itself - then update the plug-ins via the download site. There is lots of new features and quality improvements too. I will summarise these in a different blog entry. One quick note: if you are doing a fresh install - install DB2 as the database.

Tags:  aix power7 director vios power power6 systems ibmi

I've just told me this is now available from http://www.ibm.com/systems/support/tools/systemplanningtool/ Update to Version 4.10.323.0 (once you have 4.09.323 installed) OK, we have waited long enough so "hurray" its here at last. My colleague in Norway is going to use this to install a very large Power 795 in Norway next week. He is so happy because its going to save him hours and hours in setup time and will get it right first time.

Tags:  spt vios power7 power6 sizing aix

I was asked at the Technical University: How can we tell (in a script) if we are running in a WPAR or a regular AIX? We also called it the Global AIX, if its running WPARs.  It took me a good few minutes to find out how to do it and thought I would shared it to save you time: Use: uname -W It returns 0 for the Global AIX and a regular AIX or if it is in a WPAR it returns the WPAR Number (i.e. non-zero) Below we show how to use this in a script. wparno=`uname -W` if (( $wparno == "0" )) then         echo Global AIX else         echo... [More]

Tags:  global aix wpar

Here are the results from 40 techinical IBMers, 300 people at the Las Vegas Technical University (mostly customers, some business partners and a few IBMers) and 90 more from the same event in Lyon, France. Remember this contains no announcements, the technology is available now and the choice of technology is entirely my own.  Voters were allowed to vote for 4 out of the 10 and the results are percentages. All technologies got votes, so there is no failures here, even the lowest scoring one had ~47 votes. My comments: Clearly, Solid State... [More]

Tags:  analytics cloud multithreading vwpar wpar aem aix fcocee ame ssd cluster systems evacuation ghz director purescale

 I ran this session at the Las Vegas Technical University last week twice. I spend 5 minutes on each of the ten covering the basic concept and the "pro's and con's" then get the audience to vote on their top four. The smaller room took 105 people and the second time in a larger room to 187. It was a BIG conference with 1500+ people attending - its good and encouraging to see so many people interested in Power Systems. The results are fascinating a few top technologies are clear favourites but then the IBMer and customer views are... [More]

Tags:  technical power university aix smater

I am getting this question quite a lot and the answer is it depends on the model and when it was made available. These are the minimums but higher service packs are recommended . POWER7 Systems Power 750, 755 (Jan) Power 770,780 (March) Blade 700, 701,702 (June) Power 710, 720, 730, 740, 795 (Sept) AIX 5.3 TL9 SP7 SP7 - - AIX 5.3 TL10 SP4 SP4 SP5 SP5 AIX 5.3 TL11 SP2 SP2 SP5 SP5 AIX 5.3 TL12 * * * SP1 POWER7 Systems Power 750, 755 (Jan) Power 770,780 (March) Blade 700,... [More]

Tags:  6.1 710 750 pack technology 770 730 power7 795 level service 740 780 aix 5.2 720

 Its just not fair that the week I am on holiday so much brilliant software is coming out AIX 6.1 TL06 AIX 7.1 first release Workload Partition Manager for Versioned WPARs (meaning running AIX 5.2) - a Systems Director Plug-in Virtual I/O Server 2.2 Don't forget that for AIX you should also install the first service pack that comes out at the same time. This sweeps up all the fixes between the Gold DVD cut and the actual availability date. The smart guys will be downloading the AIX and VIOS DVDs from ESS (see earlier AIXblog) to get it quickly.... [More]

Tags:  mgr vios 7 for tl6 6 versions wpars wpar 2.2 aix

OK, this is "blowing my own trumpet" a little but I just finished a 12 minute movie on the best bits of Systems Director. Best in the sense that they "save me a lot of time" and you might like to take a look to see if they can help you too. As I run lots of POWER based machines and lots of copies of AIX, this is why it is very relevant to this AIXpert Blog. The 8 areas are: One Hour Install, Update Manager - HMC, Firmware & AIX  in four mouse clicks, Whole Machine Performance View, LPAR direct to HMC, Active Energy... [More]

Tags:  systesm update manager firmware aem vmcontrol energy hmc active power install director aix

With AIX 7 and POWER7, you now have the option to run the old withdrawn AIX version 5.2 within a WPAR with this new offering - AIX 5.3 Workload Partitions for AIX 7, version 1.1 This will run the same AIX 5.2 OS, same middle-ware and same application but on right-up-to-date hardware and OS. Then you can remove the old POWER4 (or older hardware) to: Reduce electricity & heat, Free up floor or rack space, Reduce hardware maintenance or if you don't have it, reduce your risks, Plus either a performance boost due to POWER7 or reduced... [More]

Tags:  versioned aix7 power7 5.2 aix wpar

In case, you did not notice (as its the silly summer season) AIX 7 is shipping in 19 days time. See the official AIX 7 Announcement Letter for all the details  This is a whole 2 months early - well done guys.

Tags:  aix7 7 aix

 Just came across this good AIX wiki article about monitoring the POWER7 CPU/core frequency changing on the fly and the new lparstat command options ( -Ew). This allows you to see what is happening with your GHz (like pmcycles -M but collected regularly). This article is written by a guru in the AIX Performance Tools developers group. It explains how the utilisation numbers are adjusted to allow for GHz using the PURR and SPURR hardware counters built in the processor to get accurate CPU stats. Check it out here - CPU Frequency Monitoring using... [More]

Tags:  power7 aix purr lparstat spurr ghz

I was just asked this question by customer and it got me thinking, Items I would include: WPAR takes seconds to create and LPARs minutes LPARs need setting VIOS LV or LUNs but WPARs add simpler NFS mount points, or can just use Global AIX diskspace options LPAR needs 512 to 1GB to boot AIX and a WPAR takes just ~60 MB (yes sixty megabytes) You can share application code say 1 GB in each and every LPAR (40 LPAR = 40 GB) or just one shared read-only copy for all WPARs 40 WPAR = 1 GB).This saves man-power in maintenance, disk space AND memory (if... [More]

Tags:  lpar power7 aix7 aix wpar 5.2