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]

Tags:  power7 systems shared storage 6.3.2 pools director powervm 3

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]

Tags:  systems availability director 6.3 high

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]

Tags:  license systems poe aix director licence power7 power

  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 dnzpax075e systems update nim director

This is part 2 of Systems Director licensing or at least working out what you are doing with System Director that requires a license. In part 1, we looked at listing (via the command line) the POWER machines that Systems Director was connected too.   This time we what to find out the machines that Active Energy Manager (AEM) is controlling. Once you have installed AEM it is tempting to start monitoring and controlling all your Power Systems electrical use and temperatures but you should only use AEM if you have a license for AEM for each... [More]

Tags:  energy active systems power powervm hmc aem licence manager aix director

I have long thought it is rather silly that IBM Systems Director can't give you a list the licenses that you should have! It does, after all, know what machines it is controlling and the data is in the database.  Perhaps, that will come in the future.  What can we do in the short term? Generally, I like to do everything from the graphical user interface (GUI) . I have not got time to learn and use both GUI and CLI. The system configuration data can be extracted using the command line interface (CLI) on the Systems Director server, so I spent... [More]

Tags:  power systems aix director hmc licences power7 vios

 I may have written about these in previous blogs but these have been updated and added too them. They are in my regular Systems Director presentation but I thought they should be shared to a wider audience - no sense is sitting on good information.  These are very much my thoughts and opinions for POWER and mostly AIX systems. These are not official IBM statements.   1) Quick Introduction . If you want a 12 minute look at how Systems Director can benefit Power and AIX system administrators in eight ways then watch my 12 minute movie. After... [More]

Tags:  systems aix director & links power tips

As part of my moving computer room project,  I had to change the IP address of my Systems Director server. I recall a long time ago there were issues in this area for (I think) ISD 6.1, so I was not looking forward to this change.  Just for a change, I thought I would check the documentation first :-)  Once I found the 6.3 part of the documentation there was a whole page on how to do this IP address change. It turns out to be very simple on ISD 6.3. Stop Systems Director with: smstop Change the IP address and DNS server, of course, to match.... [More]

Tags:  change ip on director systems aix power7 6.3 address powervm

In case you missed the announcements, I have released four new movies this week:   Shared Storage Pools phase 2 - Getting Started - movie 101   Active Memory Deduplication Theory - movie 102   Active System Optimizer - movie 103   System Director 6.3 First Use - movie 104  Catch them all at the home of POWER6, POWER7, PowerVM, Systems Director and AIX Movies - or save this link for 21 hours of intensive techie learning - http://tinyurl.com/AIXmovies   ps: The previous movie last month about installing Systems Director 6.3 on AIX is a good movie... [More]

Tags:  director active optiimizer deduplication memory power7 powervm systems aix

IBM Systems Director 6.3 Arrives Early Yes, you read that right - it arrived earlier than the date in the IBM Announcement - a free to use unexpected Xmas present from IBM. I have never heard of an early delivery before - perhaps I am getting to old and cynical :-)   The Base Server download for AIX is a larger 1.9 GB file (was 1.3 GB for 6.2) but that includes includes AEM,VMControl (and Service and support manager but we probably don't need that as we have the function in Power Systems via the HMC).  They all get installed in one go but you... [More]

Tags:  systems arrives director aix ibm early download 6.3 power power7

For Systems Director 6.2 supports Firefox 3.6, 3.5 and 3.0 - you have to be nuts to not be using 3.6 IMHO! Internet Explorer 7 or 8. See http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/director/v6r2x/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.director.plan.helps.doc/fqm0_r_supported_web_browsers.html Unofficially, I find Google Chrome 12 works fine too. For Hardware Management Console (HMC) (I am assuming a recent HMC V7R7.3 level here) it supports (from the Power7 manuals) Internet Explorer 7 but says IE 8 is not supported - just tried this and the left hand menu got... [More]

Tags:  ie console management director explorer chrome systems internet hardware firefox hmc

With Systems Director and VMControl Standard Edition (this was called Image Manager), you can Capture an AIX Virtual Server to an appliance in the VMControl Repository. Then later Deploy the appliance to a new Virtual Server on a different Power machine. What this means in proper technical "AIX speak" is Systems Director can: Create a mksysb to a NIM server and also save the LPAR settings (numbers of CPU, RAM, network and disks). Later you can perform a NIM client install from the mksysb and it automatically uses the same LPAR... [More]

Tags:  director vmcontrol appliance modify systems aix

  The USA AIX Virtual User Group have just announced a Systems Director on Power series of live webinar sessions in the next 3 months.  Briefly: Starts May 12th 2011. It is delivered remotely, over the Internet, so you can listen in from your desk and watch the slides or any demonstrations with no travelling. It covers the Overview and Basics through to the high function Tivoli Monitoring (ITM) features that are part of the Enterprise Edition of Systems Director. This is delivered by the USA Advanced Technical Skills (ATS) group and I recognise... [More]

Tags:  director systems aix vug power7 power

  Hints &Tips for Systems Director 6.2+ for AIX on POWER (Part 2) Here are a few more hints and tips - you can find Part 1 HERE 23) Excellent document on getting Systems Director running faster or starting with the right resources The document "Performance Tuning and Scaling Guide for IBM Systems Director 6.2.x" can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/SDperformance 24) Systems Director supported SAN Disks + Switches matrix can be found at http://tinyurl.com/SDdisks This explains the way that various disks are connected to Systems... [More]

Tags:  power6 aix director power systems power7

 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

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

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 aem wpar aix ame fcocee ssd cluster evacuation systems director ghz purescale

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