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 a long download of about 7 hours for the 1.9 GB but a reasonably quick install.  Fresh AIX 6.1 TL6 and service pack 6 installed.  See my Update below for a problem with this AIX level. Prepared a /database filesystem for the DB2 database. The Pre-Install Utility told me to fix some file system sizes, more paging space and ulimit - good stuff. The Installer worked fine. The CIM Server install seems to take for ages at the start!  It then refreshes the Common Agent, installed the default "managed" DB2 database invisibly behind the... [More]

Tags:  aix install on systems 6.3 power director power7

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

 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 6.3 director high

Below is from your Power Systems, Advanced Technical Support team in Europe (EMEA) with lots of input from many people.   We find many people are over optimistic and making assumptions - which can catch them out - we learnt the hard way too.   Don't Assume 1 - The same boost as last time It may be that you migrated from 2Mit to 10Mbit and saw approximately a 5 fold increase in performance. Similarly when you went from 10Mbit to 100Mbit, and from 100Mbit to 1Gbit; you saw approximately a 10 fold improvement. Don't assume that... [More]

Tags:  cables sea ive control ethernet mtu flow largesend 10gbit hea

Active Memory Deduplication was announcement on 12th October and available on 14th October but there has been a little confusion on: what you need,  how you install it and run it and how it works?  This blog will attempt to demystify this interesting new Power Systems feature.  This is one of many features to reduce the memory foot print and so reduce costs for POWER and AIX logical partitions. So far we have: Workload Partitions - reduce the memory used by many copies of AIX to just one Global copy and applications installed at the Global... [More]

 The officials words I was sent: Starting on November 13, 2011, each IBM client accessing Fix Central (whether through their employees or other authorized representatives) will require an individual IBM ID to download fixes for a limited number of additional product areas (including AIX and VIOS). This requirement will be expanded to additional products in the future.This requirement will be expanded to additional products in the future. The registration process will be quick and simple and will provide users with a customized experience to... [More]

Tags:  download id updates & ibm vios fixcentral aix

Finally, I have the types of memory by POWER7 model double checked. I refreshed the table in part 1 but thought I should make sure every one sees the final version so I have not mislead people.  Only the Power 770/780 and Power 797 have Near memory. All the smaller machine operate a Local memory meaning on the same same POWER7 chip and Far memory for any access to another POWER7 chip's memory.    

Tags:  local power7 far virtual cpu lpar memory affinity powervm near machine

The Hypervisor makes the virtual machine (LPAR) placement decisions and changes during DLPAR. The Hypervisor is part of the Power Systems Firmware.  The POWER7 machines first arrived in the early months of 2010. Since then we have had a lot of field experience with the larger machines with large configurations with large applications and tens of thousands of processes running and in particularly the machines with all three layers of memory - which are the Power 770, Power 780 and Power 795.  From this experience, the POWER developers have... [More]

Tags:  processor power7 cpu vm entitlement powervm virtual aix lpar placement

After you have started and used your virtual machine (VM) for a while, you may decide to change its size using a Dynamic LPAR (DLPAR) change from the HMC (or SDMC or IVM, of course). This has virtual machine placement implications.  When shrinking your VM, the hypervisor will decide which CPU or memory (LBM) to release and it might not select what you think is the obvious choice.  When enlarging your VM, we might thing there is an obvious way to grow in a balanced way but we can't see: 1) where physically our virtual machine is placed in the... [More]

Tags:  ram placement processor power6 power7 dlpar powervm vm lpar entitlement virtual lmb cpu aix

This is a follow on to a previous blog on " PowerVM Virtual Ethernet Speed is often confused with VIOS, SEA IVE/HEA speed "- here is a Direct Link   I regularly get asked : "I have just heard about this [PowerVM virtual switch | vSwitch | Hypervisor Ethernet Switch] is available but I can't find out any information at all, help!"   They are wanting to run two (or more) virtual switches within the one Power machine to completely separate the network packets of groups of virtual machines (LPARs) so they know for sure there can... [More]

Tags:  vswitch switch hypervisor power6 power ethernet aix powervm power7 virtual

I need you to help me settle an argument or rather lack of information. I am getting conflicting messages about whether these smaller Power7 machines use Local and Near or Local and Far memory. I documented what I thought was correct in the Part 1 of this series of blog's.   Actually, there is not much difference as these machines have two tiers of memory like "on the chip" or "some where else" so the names are hardly vital but I would like my facts straight. Unfortunately, I don't have examples of these machines with more... [More]

Tags:  730 affinity srad 740 lssrad 750 710 lpar aix power powervm 720 power7 vm

I just noted two great new things to help those running Java on AIX and it seems hard to avoid Java these days!  I was just monitoring a customer machine with 1500 WebSphere Application Servers (WAS) each with 100 to 150 threads so roughly 200,000 threads!!!  More impressing was that just 20 Power7 physical CPUs was supporting this workload.   So here are two things that can help: 1. Java Performance Advisor (JPA) Available for download to anyone on IBM DeveloperWorks website. This is a powerful new tool to help people identify opportunities to... [More]

Tags:  whitepaper best tuning power6 tool on power7 practice aix and java

Here is another question from that larger Power 7 machine customer. They have large Virtual Machines (Logical Partitions) and can't see all the CPUs on the screen. This is made worst by Power 7 machines - not a problem with the processors or machines but there are: So many CPUs on larger machines like Power 770/780 and the mighty Power 795 Then the new Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) now means four threads per physical CPU (core). This means lots of physical CPUs and each has four logical CPUs.  So what happens on the screen - you see a... [More]

Tags:  nmon longer physical cpu power powervm aix term