The new  VIOS Shared Storage Pools 3 (SSP3) arrived a month ago and I have all my VIOS updated now to VIOS 2.2.2.1 plus fixes. This brings with it the regular VIOS improvements but also new features for SSP3 including: Better pool use stats for example see the below lssp command and the Used percentage and Unused(mb) columns and the over view output too has new data $ lssp -clustername stars -sp atlantic -bd Lu Name     Size(mb) ProvisionType %Used Unused(mb) Lu Udid orange7a    32768    THIN             9% 29615        7d58538152 …... [More]

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Fourteen new movies/Video's on System Director on YouTube I have just last week uploaded 14 new System Director movies that were previously a whole day Technical University session and I thought it a good idea to share these with every body. It comes to about 4 hours in total and it a mixture of sizes from 7 minutes to 29 minutes. The focus is on core Systems Director function rather than advanced function plug-ins. It worries me a little that we often try to talk about and sell Systems Director for the advanced stuff but you really need to get... [More]

Tags:  videos youtube movies isd director experience systems

 At the Miami and Copenhagen Power Systems Technical Universities, I covered what we knew about the next release of Systems Director (6.3) planned for 16th December 2011.    One of the hot topics was High Availability using disk replication for the embedded DB2 database for active:passive fail-over.  It turns out this feature is not  included with Systems Director 6.3 release - sorry about that.   The good news, at least, is that this feature is in development and working for the next release of SDMC, which is based on Systems Director 6.3... [More]

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It has bee a long few weeks traveling to Dublin, Las Vegas, Slovenia, Germany and Sweden to give lots of presentations.  Six Weeks and five countries and the expenses are piling up on my desk. I was presenting a core set of topics like POWER7+ announcement summary, VIOS Shared Storage Pools (SSP3), Workload Partitions (WPAR) and Versioned WPARs to run AIX 5.2 and AIX 5.3, quick introduction to PowerSC (security tools), a Techie "what you need to know about" Systems Director for AIX, and Quick Dips in to Active Memory Deduplication... [More]

Tags:  ssp pools shared isd storage aix power director wpar systems aso dso powersc power7

Recently, I delivered a 7.5 hour Systems Director 6.3 Instructor lead demo at IBM Zurich - that gives us 25 more people ready to dive into using it.  It is a very polished building and the IBM Forum is amazing and they even have IBM food :-)  I had to take a second mortgage out on my house to pay for the taxi to the airport (fortunately they take a credit card) and I thought Norway was expensive until now!      Anyway, when I got back to the UK, I decided to perform the Systems Director 6.3 to 6.3.1 update.  You get Systems Director to update... [More]

Tags:  6.3.1 director aix managment power power7 atkupd575e systems

Systems Director 6.3.1 is available   This includes a fix I needed. On a completely fresh install the Update Manager will not work with the NIM server for AIX updates due to a bug that forgets to create /export/um_lpp_source on the NIM server - oops!   Fixed with: /usr/sbin/crfs -v jfs2 -g rootvg -m  /export/um_lpp_source -a size=1G But make sure it mounts by default on AIX reboot.   Find the What's New for 6.3.1   Install the new ISD 6.3.1 update and lots of fixes - you get Systems Director to do upgrade as normal

Tags:  systems director 6.3.1

The below URL takes you to the top of the Systems Director 6.3 online documentation http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/director/pubs/topic/com.ibm.director.main.helps.doc/fqm0_main.html As a rule I use Firefox 3.6.24 all the time for my browsing as it works well for Systems Director and Hardware Management Console (HMC). Later Firefox versions have "variable" results which re frustrating and that just slow me down. The Firefox developer when mad and got to version 8 suddenly over what appeared to be a few weeks but have realised... [More]

Tags:  director systems firefox 3.6 infocenter docs 6.3

So you have Discovered, given Access and run Inventory on your HMC and it is not finding the Servers and Virtual Servers that the HMC is connected too! What do you do next? Well here are a series of suggestions for you to try (this is not an official diagnostics path but might help you out): How much memory has your HMC got? I get people trying to use old HMCs and the original ones had just 1 GB of memory. This is basically not enough these days - in my humble opinion - unless you have just one machine! But how do you find out what you have?... [More]

Tags:  aix power7 powervm director hmc power6 systems

Hi, I am just back from the Prague Technical University last week. Everything worked well at the conference at the Hilton and the sessions were excellent - even the ones that I ran :-)   but I keep making one mistake ... I volunteer to give an extra session or two. I ran the following sessions: Systems Director Lecture for AIX/POWER Users This covers the basics for a techie that needs to get it running including the architecture/components, pre-requisites, Advanced plug-in selection, The Systems Director Editions for reduced cost, compared... [More]

Tags:  systems aix power power7 director

I am preparing sessions for a POWER/AIX Technical Conference in Norway - unfortunately the only place they could book for the event was a Ski Resort up in the mountains and there is still good snow. It is a tough gig but someone has to do it :-)  As part of that conference, I am updating them on Systems Director and demonstrating it. I had a slide with these hints and tips. A slide with zero percent marks for style (far to many words and just a long list) and I thought ... I should share these with everyone, so here they are. Most of these are... [More]

Tags:  power7 vios aix endpoint systems director nim server power

Just completed the move of the POWER and AIX Hands-on Movies to YouTube videos - after pruning we have 97 of them. This means you can watch them on your mobile Smartphone and Tablets in addition to your workstation/personal computer. You can find them all here:   YouTube  look for my "Nigel Griffiths" Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/nigelargriffiths This should mean they are simpler to find, search for and view.   During the transfer I pruned out a few of the older ones particular Systems 6.2 as we now have a set of Systems... [More]

Tags:  youtube systems power powersc aix vidoes powervm director

Hi, Rob McNelly, the esteemed POWER7 Champion, sent me a really good questions and I thought would make a good blog as I get asked this about once a month. I have cut down the questions a but but it is a two parts: His customer is thinking about putting Systems Director on to their NIM server. Rob remembered me commenting on this but wants the details. They are planning to give it 1 dedicated Power7 core and 12G memory. What do I think about that?   Answer 1: 2 years ago this combination (NIM & ISD) was not allowed ( I think it was just not... [More]

Tags:  server many cpus? on the & director nim systems running how

At a recent POWER & AIX Workshop, I was challenged when I stated that you can download IBM Systems Director (ISD) and run it at no costs. Granted: If you want IBM Support for ISD functions then you do need to purchase the license and SWMA for every endpoint (think HMC and every core of any machine that ISD is controlling).  Compared to other systems management tools (I have worked with in the past) the ISD prices are very low so its worth asking for the local currency price.  I also think most people (including myself) will get stuck on... [More]

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  I suddenly could not get AIX updates to work via my NIM server. The problem number DNZPAX075E just means the NIM command failed for unknown reasons. Not very helpful when you have a ISD Server, NIM Server and a Target AIX Server and the problem could be anywhere.  I looked around and found a few other people were stuck on this one.  So now I worked it out - with the help excellent help of systems Director support. 1) Restart the Systems Director Server and the NIM Server - just good house keeping and check you have free disk space in the... [More]

Tags:  error systems dnzpax075e update nim director