As part of my nmon for Linux open source project, I often get asked questions and I have selected one here that comes up often. The nmon user asks is nmon only reporting 48 CPUs when he knows the machine has 24 CPU and they are 6 core each? The first answer was - Why the heck are you using a 4 years out of date nmon for Linux version?? But once we get passed that shocker, we look in to the details nmon has collected.   From the nmon data in the BBB Section, we have the /proc/cpuinfo file.  It is massive and has large amounts... [More]

Note: For the POWER7/7+ equivalent Blog take this link  AIX and VIOS Minimum Levels for POWER7 and 7+ Hardware  from 2013.   UPDATE: January 2017 This information has aged in the last year and POWER8 has matured. Take this link for the updated information -> AIX, VIOS, System Firmware of HMC - Don't run anything over 2 years old   Below is now out of date: Note the latest and recommended versions will change... [More]

Previous Remote Restart was rather complicated and involved Active Memory Sharing setup, hence the new name. What is it for? You have a running Virtual Machine but the Server it was running on suddenly halt which some machine level issue. The details of the Virtual Machine are available and so it the disk on a SAN device - external to the machine. You just need to rebuild the Virtual Machine on a different server with enough CPU and RAM resources, connect the disks and network. So you can quickly restart the service. This is what Simplified... [More]

Well it is still early days for this new machine (week 5 from General Availability and there was Xmas in the middle) and I get distracted but concurrently running lots of projects.  In this AIXpert Blog entry I am to make some comments on the S812LC OpenPOWER machine regarding Updating Firmware and then Getting the Front Disk Bays working with the simpler RAID Controller (Feature code EC3Y but I am sure the other fancy RAID Controller would be much the same but with fancier RIAD options like RAID5).   The development... [More]

Over the Xmas break I have been busy improving nmon and this is a summary. Below is a summary with pictures: 1 New Performance Statistics GPU First for the OpenPOWER people using the Nvidia GPUs within the S822LC (Firestone) machines we have the Graphical Processor Units and a previous AIXpert Blog covered the details but below is a little reminder: These are the stats on-screen GPU MHz CPU and Memory Utilisation Temperature in C Electrical power in Watts This is also saved to the nmon output file.   MHz Below we now noticed the CPU... [More]

The High Performance guys at IBM thought it would be good to add Nvidia K80 GPUs stats to my nmon for Linux open source tool and who am I to complain about that?  My new best friend :-) Manish Modani, gave me remote access to an internal machine in Austin, Texas from London over the IBM network and once the IBM firewall allowed me on the Austin lab network  I was logged in.   Then the fun started as I know nothing about these GPU devices.  First we came across a NVidia command that outputs a lot of stats on... [More]

I am upgrading my VIOS to 2.2.4.10 which includes SSP5 Tiers functions and LU grow functions and lots of other improvements To keep track of the nodes that still need to upgraded you can use the VIOS cluster -status -verbose command but the details fly up the screen and ate not visible without scrolling back and are gone and I really don't what to see all those massive hexadecimal internal Id's etc.   So here is a quick one line script "ncluster" /usr/ios/cli/ioscli cluster -status -verbose -fmt : -field... [More]

Due to my S812LC machine being on the Early Ship Program (ESP) the Lab guys pre-installed an operating system for us and that gave us a good starting point. We could install the hardware, power up and using the VGA video port and USB keyboard get to the Petitboot menu to decide the boot disk (among other tasks) and if we leave it alone for a minute it default boots to (in our case) Ubuntu for PPC64 14.04.03 ( the long term Ubuntu 14.04 with lots of updates). We just needed to add our network details and we are online in 5 minutes.  This... [More]

In the OpenPOWER IBM S812LC - First Look we had a look at the basic machine but in this blog we now have 12 disks to add and a RAID SATA adapter to drive them. I have made an update with new information at the end of this Blog in red. Here is a repeat of the first picture but highlighting the details for supporting the twelve 3.5 inch Front Disk Bays: Note: The three blue SATA cables are provided with the basic system but not connected to anything, of course, until now.   Below the delivery unpacked... [More]

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If you just want the S812LC pictures, you should scroll down a bit ...     For reasons I do not understand there are very few picture of this new machine from IBM.  So I want to fix that in this blog entry and as a picture says 1000 words this will hopefully explain a lot about the machine - the equivalent of 37,000 words!   First, thing you need to know is that it is not in the regular IBM Power Systems series of machines. It is designed and developed by OpenPOWER Foundation early member Tyan use the POWER8... [More]

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I recently got asked about this - here is my response (the language has been toned down a bit from the original). Internal disks on a E870/880? - you having a laugh!   Are you mad? Are you a Luddite? Is the date 1995 in your country? Three reasons: VERY slow (200 IOPS) compared to a caching SAN disk unit with dozens of disks or even a Flash SAN unit at hundreds of times faster.  Why would you want your VIOS to be that slow at disk I/O?   MUCH lower RAS than a SAN disks (single brown spinning disks are single points of... [More]

This is an update to an older AIXpert Blog entry here: Shared Storage Pools 4 - The search for a better lu -list command   With Shared Storage Pools phase 5 coming soon,  we have the lu -list command that output the Logical Unit (virtual disks) in Tier then Alphabetical order - hurray! But it still has challenges and one command output can't please every one!   Trouble is everyone has there own ideas of  “perfect layout” It is a "no... [More]

    We have just had our Advanced Technology Support Early Ship Program (ESP) proto-type E850 machine refurbished at the Power Development Lab in the USA to bring it up to the General Available (GA) hardware level.  A large number of parts were replaced (these part seemed to be working fine during our test but need to get to the official level).  This is perfectly normal ESP process of removing early and test parts of a machine that is now in normal service.   What changed apart from internal electronics which... [More]

Update Version 14: Just release version 14 (17th March 2016) Changed format a little in light of experience of uploading to the Work Load Estimator Changed to official Column header line Note: it is mandatory to include the header line generated but nmon2WLE -c The online IBM WLE tool needs a specific string to identify the System = the web tool pops-up the list for you to select from. Unfortunately, these strings and user friendly server names ( like Power Systems E850) are not available within AIX so nmon reports just the System Model:... [More]