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Updating your PowerHA cluster with cl_ezupdate
PowerHA 7.2.1 (June 2017) introduced the cl_ezupdate utility. You can use the cl_ezupdate command to update the software for the entire cluster or a subset of nodes in the cluster, often without disrupting workloads. https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSPHQG_7.2.2/com.ibm.powerha.cmds/hacmpcmds_whatsnew.htm You can use this tool to apply and reject updates for PowerHA service packs and technology levels and interim fixes. This process is performed on the entire cluster or on a specific subset of nodes in the cluster.... [More]
Tags:  aix cl_ezupdate 7.2.1 powerha |
"Cloud Ready" AIX Images
PowerVC compatible "ready to deploy" images for AIX 7.1 TL 5 and AIX 7.2 TL 2 “In addition to installation images for AIX, "cloud" image formats are also made available that can be readily deployed with PowerVC. These images contain a default AIX base media install configuration that includes Cloud Init and its dependencies. The images can be obtained from the IBM Entitled System Support website or IBM Passport Advantage. For AIX 7.1 TL 5 SP0 and AIX 7.2 TL 2 SP0, the image files have the following names”.... [More]
Tags:  7.2 powervc cloud 7.1 ready images aix |
Simplifying AIX Live Update with PowerVC
Starting with AIX Version 7.2, the AIX operating system provides the Live Update function which eliminates downtime required when patching the AIX operating system kernel. Your application workloads are not stopped, yet they can take advantage of the new fixes immediately after the Live Update operation, without a reboot. Administrators can use the Live Update feature to install AIX interim fixes, service packs and technology levels. In a nutshell, Live Update allows AIX administrators to install AIX updates in-place, but instead of... [More]
Tags:  blog 7.2 openstack pvcauth live aix powervc update novalink hmc power8 tl2 chris cloud vios geninstall powervm power gibson |
OpenSSH 7.0 & greater disable ssh-dss by default.
OpenSSH 7.0 & greater disable ssh-dss by default. http://bit.ly/2vZBMyH If you upgrade OpenSSH, to 7.1.102.1100 on AIX for example, you may notice that you're unable to login afterwards, with ssh-dss keys. In syslog you'll see messages similar to this: Syslog: Sep 11 15:40:34 cgaix auth|security:info sshd[9961802]: userauth_pubkey: key type ssh-dss not in PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes [preauth] # lslpp -l openssh\* Fileset Level State... [More]
Tags:  by 7.0 chris gibson disable fail default openssh & in prompt password not aix pubkeyacceptedkeytypes blog ssh-dss login userauth_pubkey ssh greater |
AIX sudo: no tty present and no askpass program specified
Before I describe the sudo problem I hit, I will tell you that the root cause of the problem is evident in the following output: # mount node mounted mounted over vfs date options -------- --------------- --------------- ------ ------------ --------------- ... [More]
Tags:  to tty askpass chris /etc/sudo.conf blog gibson resolve debug unable aix via present /etc/filesystems not program mounted no and sudo specified /proc sudo: |
Quick start guide to configuring PowerSC RTC on AIX
Using PowerSC RTC to monitor for the deletion of a specific file. One of my customers was concerned that someone or something was randomly deleting the /etc/niminfo on several of his AIX hosts. We discussed several ways in which he could track down who or what was removing this file. Obviously, the AIX audit subsystem would be an ideal method of capturing this event. However, PowerSC Real Time Compliance (RTC) can also monitor and capture this type of event. “The PowerSC™ Real Time Compliance feature continuously... [More]
Tags:  file to guide aix rtc blog chris deletion rtcd audit powersc deleted gibson configuring on quick start |
Investigating AIX system crashes with minidump
The AIX minidump facility was introduced with AIX 5.3 TL3. A mini dump is a small compressed dump that is stored to NVRAM when a system crashes or a dump is initiated, and then written to the AIX error log on reboot. It can be used to see some of the system’s state and do some debugging when a full dump is not available. It can also be used to get a quick snapshot of a crash without having to transfer the entire dump from the crashed system to IBM support. Please refer to the following, official guide, on " How to examine a... [More]
Tags:  sdduserinterfac pcmusergetdevin gibson power8 crash trc_generate minidump aix dump wpar errpt chris 128 blog system e880 mdmprpt sddpcm cores trc_inmem_recor |
Automatically backup VIOS configuration changes
The latest release of the VIOS provides a way to automatically backup your virtual device configuration whenever it changes. From the IBM Knowledge Center for POWER8: https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/POWER8/p8hcg/p8hcg_viosbr.htm "The viosbr command automatically creates a backup, whenever there are any configuration changes. This functionality is known as the autoviosbr backup. It is triggered every hour, and checks if there are any configuration changes, or any other changes. If it detects any changes, a backup... [More]
Tags:  blog /usr/ios/sbin/autoviosbr autobackup vios chris autoviosbr aix powervm gibson viosbr |
Migrating you NIM Master to AIX 7.2 using the VIOS VML
On more than one occasion I’ve written articles and blogs on how to migrate AIX systems to a new version of the AIX operating system. You can find a list these articles (and others) here . Each of the NIM articles focuses on migrating AIX systems (which are configured as NIM clients). The approach is always the same; use a NIM master to migrate the NIM clients to the next release of AIX. What they don’t discuss is how to migrate your NIM master to a new version of the OS. This is the very first step you should take before you... [More]
Tags:  master using sddpcm 7.2 vml chris the nimadm to you migrating gibson nim vios aix |
AIX, LPM & Partition ID sorcery! Why does AIX report that my partition ID has changed after LPM when it hasn't?
I LPM'ed an AIX LPAR from Frame A to Frame B. The LPAR id before the LPM was 99 and after the LPM it's still 99. And the system id has changed, as expected. Good. Before migration. root@lpar1 / # uname -L 99 lpar1 root@lpar1 / # lsattr -El sys0 -a systemid systemid IBM, 017268B60 Hardware system identifier False After migration. root@lpar1 / # uname -L 99 lpar1 root@lpar1 / # lsattr -El sys0 -a systemid systemid IBM, 0157F5B16 Hardware system identifier False Great, that's exactly... [More]
Tags:  last uname lpm chris since aix id partition changed boot gibson |
AIX rootvg failure monitoring
AIX has a new “critical volume group” capability which will monitor for the loss or failure of a volume group. You can apply this to any volume group, including rootvg. If applied to rootvg, then you can monitor for the loss of the root volume group. This feature may be useful if your AIX LPAR experiences a loss of SAN connectivity e.g. total loss of access to SAN storage and/or all SAN switches. Typically, when this happens, AIX will continue to run, in memory for a period of time and will not immediately crash. Often you... [More]
Tags:  failure gibson aix chris monitoring vg group volume critical cgaix chvg rootvg |
NIM Master, NIMSH and SSL on AIX 7.1 TL4 SP3
Whilst working with one of my AIX customers recently I discovered a problem with NIMSH and SSL. The customer had updated their NIM master from AIX 7.1 TL4 SP1 to AIX 7.1 TL4 SP3 . After the SP update, any attempt to connect to a NIM client (over NIMSH+SSL), from the NIM master, would simply hang. For example, we tried to list the filesets on the NIM client with this command, which never returned any output. [root@750lpar4]/ # nim -o lslpp 750lpar9 The /var/adm/ras/nimsh.log file, on the NIM client, showed that the NIMSH session... [More]
Tags:  nimsh sp3 nim hang lslpp chris 7.1 ssl tl4 7100-04-03-1642 aix gibson -o iv93152 libssl.so |
j2pg high CPU usage on AIX
Recently I've come across an odd issue at two different customers. I thought I'd share the experience, in case others also come across this strange behaviour. In both cases they reported j2pg high CPU usage . Similar to this... And, in both cases, we discovered many /usr/sbin/update processes running. Unexpectedly . When we stopped these processes, j2pg's CPU consumption dropped to nominal levels. The j2pg process is responsible for, among other things, flushing data to disk and is called by the... [More]
Tags:  /usr/sbin/update gibson cpu j2pg high aix chris |
Minimum memory requirement for AIX 7.2 Live Update
AIX 7.2 requires 2GB of memory to boot, but this minimum is not enforced in the LPAR profile except by Live Update (to ensure we'll be able to boot the surrogate LPAR). You can check your Minimum Memory setting in your LPARs profile by running the lparstat command (as shown below). # lparstat -i | grep Memory Online Memory : 4096 MB Maximum Memory ... [More]
Tags:  gibson minimum aix partition for live memory chris profile 7.2 updates |
Is large send offload enabled on my AIX system?
Enabling TCP large send offload (LSO), on AIX, is generally considered a good thing. It helps with overall network performance. Taking advantage of networking large-send large-receive https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/W51a7ffcf4dfd_4b40_9d82_446ebc23c550/page/Taking%20advantage%20of%20networking%20large-send%20large-receive TCP large send offload “This option improves the performance on 10 Gigabit Ethernet and faster adapters for workloads that manage data streaming (such as file transfer... [More]
Tags:  netstat gibson aix chris lso offload send packets large |
DLPAR event history on the HMC
You can use the HMC lssvcevents command to view DLPAR event history. In the following example, I’m looking for “Add processor” related DLPAR events, over the last 30 days, for a specific LPAR. $ lssvcevents -t console -d 30 | egrep 'Add processor|DLPAR' | grep s82861p22_nim time=12/01/2016 00:48:33,text=HSCE2209 User name hscroot: DLPAR Add processor resources to partition s82861p22_nim succeeded on managed system Server-8286-42A-SN214F55V Search for all DLPAR events over the last 30 days. $... [More]
Tags:  gibson aix hmc dlpar lssvcevents events history chris |
AIX WPAR tips and tricks
Here’s some handy tips and tricks for managing WPARs in your AIX environment. How to share a global file system with a WPAR. - In the Global. root@750lpar11]/ # uname -W 0 - Global File System that you want to share with the WPAR (750wpar2). [root@750lpar11]/ # df -g /cg Filesystem GB blocks Free %Used Iused %Iused Mounted on /dev/cglv 1.98 0.30 ... [More]
Tags:  chris tricks namefs gibson partition tips rootvg vwpar woroload wpar migrate aix versioned |
What are those AIX fcstat error numbers all about?
When troubleshooting Fibre Channel adapter issues on AIX (or VIOS), I often use the fcstat command to assist me in the process. The command may display error numbers similar to the following: $ fcstat fcs0 Error opening device: /dev/fscsi0 errno: 00000045 The error number (errno) displayed can (in some cases) be used to identify the root cause of a problem. In the example above, the error number is 45 . This number is in hex. If we convert this to decimal, the number is 69. Now, if we look for 69 in the /usr/include/errno.h... [More]
Tags:  fcstat gibson errno chris vios aix |
Hacking cloud-init on AIX.
There may be better ways to do this, and if there are, please let me know. But lately I've been "hacking around" with cloud-init on AIX and trying to make it behave the way I want it to. There were two problems I faced and solved. My first challenge. The AIX /etc/hosts file isn't updated with the IP address and hostname of the new AIX VM after deployment from PowerVC. To work-around this niggle*, I added the following short but effective shell script to the Activation Input in the PowerVC GUI. #!/bin/ksh... [More]
Tags:  /etc/hosts update hack resolv.conf chris cloud-init aix hostname gibson |
Running the Virtual HMC on your Apple MacBook Pro.
My colleague in Lab Services, Ben Swinney, recently configured the Virtual HMC on his Apple Macbook. He was kind enough to write up his experience, so that others could also run the vHMC on their Mac. Me included! You can find Ben’s instructions here: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/cgaix/resource/vHMC_running_on_Apple_hardware.pdf Thanks Ben!
Tags:  power8 gibson hardware systems power ibm swinney management chris vhmc hmc aix virtual ben console |
Using NIM to distribute files to your AIX servers.
At the IBM Technical Symposium in Sydney last week, a person approached me to discuss NIM and some of its capabilities. During the conversation we discussed how NIM could be used to copy files from the NIM master to its NIM clients. I promised to send them some information on how to achieve this ASAP. They were smart and followed up with an email the next day! They’d even tried to configure this on their systems but hit a small problem. "Hello Chris, So trying to push out a new netbackup tar file to one of our nim... [More]
Tags:  resource files server copy master sync chris blog client aix gibson nim |
NIMSH, SSL and LPM.
Do you use SSL with nimsh on AIX? No? Well, you might want to consider it. If you regularly use LPM to migrate AIX partitions from one server to another, you may have found that, on occasion , your NIM master has trouble communicating with its NIM clients afterwards. This is by design, as nimsh uses the NIM clients cpuid to authenticate with the NIM master. During an LPM operation, the cpuid of the NIM client changes and its possible the NIM master may reject the client as a result. This problem can occur even when CPU validation is disabled on... [More]
Tags:  error processing aix blog encountered on ssl lpm chris "master": nim: gibson nimsh nim 0042-001 |
Is that a versioned WPAR I see before me?
Is that a versioned WPAR? Use the lswpar command and the –G option to determine the WPAR type. Yeah, I could use clogin and then run oslevel , but this is faster! [root@gibopvc1]/ # lswpar -G p8wpar1 ================================================================= p8wpar1 - Active ================================================================= Type: S RootVG... [More]
Tags:  versioned aix gibson type wpar chris |
NIM - "...the resource is currently allocated for client use" - er, NO it's not!
On the odd occasion, NIM may report that a resource is allocated to a NIM client, when, in fact, it is not. Typically, you’d check that the resource was, in fact, not allocated for use to any NIM client and if it was, you would reset the client; and this would resolve the issue. But if that doesn’t work, you may need to take an additional action to resolve the problem. This doesn’t happen very often but it can frustrate you when it does. Here’s an example of the problem. I try to remove an lpp_source resource but... [More]
Tags:  blog currently nim client is 0042-001 /usr/lpp/bos.sysmgt/nim/m... gibson aix for 0042-061 chris use allocated m_chattr |
NIM support for installing AIX updates and new packages over HTTP
There’s a new NIM HTTP service handler included with AIX 7.2 (due for release next month, December 2015). This new service is designed “…….to help Clients better conform to emerging data center policies restricting the use of NFS, NIM will now have support to apply updates to AIX or install new packages over HTTPs. Initial AIX installs will still require the use of NFS version 3 or the more secure NFS version 4 protocol. In addition to fileset installs, NIM customization activities such as script... [More]
Tags:  chris gibson nim blog aix http |
Help! My mksysb is only backing up 4 files!
I enjoy it when I open my email in the morning and find a new message with a subject line of “ weird one… .”! I immediately prepare myself for whatever challenge awaits. Fortunately I do delight in helping others with their AIX challenges so I usually open these emails first and start to diagnose and troubleshoot the problem! This week I was contacted by someone that was having a little trouble with a mksysb backup on one of their AIX systems. “Hi Chris, This one has me stumped, any ideas? I’ll have... [More]
Tags:  chris backing up files blog gibson aix 4 mksysb |
AIX Live Update using NIM
In my previous post on AIX Live Updates I discussed how to use the geninstall command to perform a non-disruptive (ifix) update on an AIX system. In this post I wanted to show you how to perform the same task using NIM. NIM can be used to start an AIX Live Update operation on a target machine (NIM client) either from a NIM master or from the NIM client itself (with nimclient ). Note: The AIX Live Update operation started by NIM calls the hmcauth command during the cust operation to authenticate to the NIM client with the HMC by... [More]
Tags:  lku aix chris blog nimclient nim 7.2 live update gibson |
AIX Live Update - No Reboot Required! Non-disruptive OS Updates!
AIX Live Update Starting with AIX Version 7.2, the AIX operating system provides the AIX Live Update function which eliminates downtime associated with patching the AIX operating system. Previous releases of AIX required systems to be rebooted after an interim fix was applied to a running system. This new feature allows workloads to remain active during a Live Update operation and the operating system can use the interim fix immediately without needing to restart the entire system. In the first release of this feature, AIX Live Update will... [More]
Tags:  chris kernel aix update live gibson 7.2 lku |
Installing and using PowerVP on AIX
IBMs PowerVP tool became available in November 2013. It was designed to provide Power Systems administrators with performance information in an enhanced visual format. The aim was to accelerate the identification of performance bottlenecks so that performance analysts could make better decisions based on more detailed and comprehensive data from POWER7 (and POWER8) systems. PowerVP presents both System (frame) and Partition level views of performance data. This has not been possible in the past using any single tool. Administrators would... [More]
Tags:  aix chris java powervp gibson |
Queue depth setting in a Versioned WPAR on AIX
One of my customers was configuring a new AIX 5.3 Versioned WPAR when they came across a very interesting issue. I thought I’d share the experience here, just in case anyone else comes across the problem. We configured the VWPAR to host an old application. The setup was relatively straight forward, restore the AIX 5.3 mksysb into the VWPAR and export the data disk from the Global into the VWPAR, import the volume group and mount the file systems. Job done! However, we noticed some fairly poor performance during application load... [More]
Tags:  disk depth wpar performance aix versioned io queue vwpar chris gibson |
Restoring a Versioned WPAR with NIM
I was contacted recently by a customer who was attempting to restore an AIX 5.3 Versioned WPAR (VWPAR) from backup using NIM. The restore worked OK but the data was restored to the wrong volume group! When the VWPAR was created, the –g option was specified with mkwpar to force the creation of the VWPAR file systems in a separate volume group (named wparvg) rather than the default location of the Global root volume group (rootvg). # mkwpar - g wparvg -n p8vw2 -B /cg/53gibbo.mksysb -C -O Running lsvg against... [More]
Tags:  vwpar gibson chris iv68299 wpar blog aix mkwpar group wparvg volume restore rootvg nim |
SSH delay with security.pkcs11 installed.
After updating my AIX 7.1 TL3 system to service pack 4 , I noticed that each time I started a new ssh session with this system, there was a noticeable delay before the login prompt was displayed. I initially thought there was a network or host name resolution (DNS) problem, but after thoroughly checking related files, such as /etc/hosts , /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/netsvc.conf , I started looking for a problem elsewhere. I used truss to assist me in my investigation. I found that the each time an ssh client connected to the sshd... [More]
Tags:  ssh truss security.pkcs11 usepkcs gibson sshd aix chris |
SSP and Disaster Recovery (Tech Preview)
I’ve been working with a customer recently that required a special kind of disaster recovery capability for their shared storage pool (SSP) environment. The customer had implemented a private cloud solution in their existing POWER environment. The solution consisted of an IBM SmartCloud deployment with IBM Systems Director and VMControl managing the PowerVM deployment of virtual machines (AIX partitions) across the landscape. The decision to use shared storage pools was driven by the fact that the customer was using SAN storage... [More]
Tags:  ssp aix vios dr recovery chris disaster gibson |
Managing an existing AIX virtual machine with PowerVC
It’s possible, with PowerVC, to manage existing AIX and Linux partitions in your environment. This may be useful for customers that have recently installed PowerVC in their environment and have existing AIX partitions. The question that is often asked is “ Can I manage these existing partitions with PowerVC? ”. These existing partitions were deployed outside of PowerVC, often long before PowerVC was even available as product from IBM. Fortunately the answer to this question is most likely yes! Before you add an existing... [More]
Tags:  powervc virtual aix managing machines existing |
AIX snap - Prevent dump collection
You can specify the –Z flag with the AIX snap command to prevent it from collecting system dump data. The flag is not shown in the man page for snap . However, it is listed in the usage information. # oslevel -s 7100-03-03-1415 # sysdumpdev -L Device name: /dev/lg_dumplv Major device number: 10 Minor device number: 11 Size: 174708224 bytes Uncompressed Size: ... [More]
Tags:  prevent dump -z gibson snap chris collection aix |
Where'd DLPAR go in HMC V8R8.1.0.1?
Starting with HMC V8R8.1.0.1 there’s a new, enhanced HMC interface available. You are given the choice of using either the Classic or Enhanced interface when you login to the HMC. If you select ‘ Enhanced ’ you may find that the traditional DLPAR menu ( Dynamic partitioning ) has seemingly disappeared! You may be expecting the “classic” DLPAR menu, as shown in the following image. CLASSIC DLPAR You will not find the ‘ Dynamic partitioning ’ option or interface.... [More]
Tags:  power8 chris hmc v8r8.1.0.1 aix powervc gibson |
Collecting PowerVP system level data from the AIX command line.
It’s possible to collect PowerVP system level agent data from the AIX command line. You can collect this data by running Java and specifying the powervp.jar file, as shown below. You need to specify the hostname, username and password for the host where the system level agent resides. In the following example the hostname/IP address is 10.1.1.99 and the username/password is root and mypass1. I found the PowerVP JAR file in the default PowerVP install directory, which (on AIX) is usually /IBM/PowerVP/... [More]
Tags:  jar aix line gibson chris java powervp command |
MDS reports
I like using the IBM Microcode Discovery Service ( MDS ) to perform spot checks on POWER system and adapter firmware levels. This tool gives me snapshot of a POWER systems current firmware levels. I can tell almost immediately if I need to update the firmware on the system or any device installed in the server. This report is especially useful when performing a health check on a customer’s system. The tool is easy to use. First you need to download the latest inventory scout catalog file from the IBM website. The most current... [More]
Tags:  invscout device report file mup gibson adapter mic power aix firmware microcode mds catalog chris |
Tips and tricks with dsh on AIX
I received the following errors whilst running dsh on a NIM master recently. root@nim1 : / # dsh -waixlpar1 date 0042-053 lsnim: there is no NIM object named "aixlpar1" The node aixlpar1 is not defined in NIM database. aixlpar1: Mon Aug 4 14:01:57 EET 2014 I had to set the following environment variable, shown below. By setting DSH_CONTEXT to DSH this prevented the dsh command from referring to the NIM database and instead forced it to query a user-defined node list. root@nim1 : / # export DSH_CONTEXT=DSH... [More]
Tags:  dsh gibson chris there 0042-053 no 22 aix different lsnim dsh_remote_opts object dsh_context named port nim is |
Display VCPU affinity with PowerVP
This post introduces two new features that I came across recently and found rather interesting. The first relates to PowerVP (VCPU affinity) and the second to POWER8 (Flexible SMT). I’m particularly impressed by this new feature in PowerVP version 1.1.2 (SP1). You can view CPU and memory affinity information directly from the PowerVP GUI. From the PowerVP Installation and User Guide: “If you go to the View menu and select the Display CPU affinity information, the CPU utilization information will be replaced in... [More]
Tags:  powervm chris gibson aix smt 1.1.2 vcpu powervp power8 flexible affinity |
Troubleshooting AIX hdisk configuration errors
Last year I was working for a customer that was upgrading several AIX 5.3 systems to AIX 6.1 . The migrations were successful for the most part, but we did encounter one issue that took a little time to resolve. The customer was using nimadm to migrate. This process worked fine, however, on a couple of systems a strange error was encountered after the migration. The LPAR was booted into AIX 6.1 and everything came up fine. The applications were started and users started accessing the system. It was several days later, when the AIX... [More]
Tags:  device specified liblpp.a does configuration odm hds the gibson not customized error vsp 0514-023 method database. exist /usr/lib/methods/cfgscsid... in pdpathat aix chris |
Understanding viostat -adapter vfchost output.
The first
time I ran the ’ viostat –adapter’ command I expected to find
non-zero values for kbps , tps , etc, for each vfchost adapter. However, the values were always zero, no matter
how much traffic traversed the adapters.
$ viostat
-adapter 1 10
... vadapter: Kbps tps
bkread ... [More]
Tags:  virtual vios powervm channel vfchost aix fibre viostat vfc -adapter npiv |
My root volume group is called old_rootvg....HELP!!
So, your root volume group is
called old_rootvg not rootvg? Wait……what!? aixlpar1 : #
lspv hdisk0 00c342c68dfcbdfb old_rootvg active
< This is BAD! hdisk1 00c342c6161c6b47 appvg active How did you end up in this
situation? Did you reinstall AIX with some strange incantation or did some
alternate disk activity go horribly wrong? Not sure? Me neither! Fortunately the following
tech-note and associated script can help. ... [More]
Tags:  aix importvg old_rootvg chris_gibson synclvodm rootvg odmdelete |
The new VIOS performance advisor tool
I updated my
lab VIOS to the latest fix pack ( V2.2.2.1 )
this week and thought I’d try the new VIOS part command. This new command is an improved version of the existing vios_advisor tool. The major difference
between the two is the fact that the new tool is now included with VIOS code
and will be updated via new VIOS fix packs. The following link has some
information on using the command: http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/powersys/v3r1m5/index.jsp?topic=/p7hcg/part.htm This new
tool “Provides performance reports with
suggestions... [More]
Tags:  2.2.2.1 vios power7 advisor reporting vios_advisor aix chris_gibson tool part performance lpar ioslevel |
Testing "Scaled Throughput" mode with AIX 7.1 on POWER7.
Starting with AIX 6.1 TL08 and AIX 7.1
TL02 there’s a new AIX CPU tuning feature called “ Scaled Throughput ” mode. This is supported on POWER7 and POWER7+ processors
only ( do not try this on POWER6!). This
new mode has the ability to dispatch workload to more SMT threads per VP,
avoiding the need to unfold additional VPs. I’ve heard it described as being more
“POWER6 like”. I’m not suggesting that you use this feature. This post simply
discusses what this new mode can do. By default AIX (on POWER7) operates in “ Raw Throughput” mode.... [More]
Tags:  smt scaled_throughput chris_gibson aix power7 vpm_throughput_mode |
Updating your NIM master to AIX 7.1 TL2? Take note!
After
updating my NIM master to AIX 7.1 TL2 SP1 (7100-02-01-1245), I noticed a
problem. Whenever I installed a new AIX partition using NIM, the resources
allocated to the NIM client were not being de-allocated, even though the installation was completing successfully. Also,
if I tried to run my usual ‘NIM client reset’ script (below), the resources
were still allocated. #!/usr/bin/ksh # Reset a
NIM client. if [[
"$1" = "" ]] ; then echo Please specify a NIM client to reset
e.g. aixlpar1. else if lsnim -l $1... [More]
Tags:  nim not working tl2 issue 7.1 chris_gibson aix resources de-allocate |
Multibos saved my bacon!
A colleague of mine was planning to modify the max_xfer_size attribute on a couple of
FC adapters in one of his AIX LPARs. As he was describing his plan to me, I
asked him how he intended to back out of the change should the LPAR fail to
boot after the modifications. “ But, what could
possibly go wrong?” he fired back. I advised him to use multibos to create a standby (backup)
instance of the AIX OS, just in case. He begrudgingly did so, just to keep me
happy. The next day he told me the following
tale. He had modified the FC... [More]
Tags:  bacon max_xfer_size multibos chris_gibson aix |
In a perfect world....rootvg would always reside on hdisk0.
In a perfect world, 99.9% of AIX administrators would prefer their systems to look like this: # lspv | grep rootvg hdisk0 00c342c68dfcbdfb rootvg active However, in reality, 99.9% of AIX administrators live with systems that look something like this: # lspv | grep rootvg hdisk39... [More]
Tags:  hdisk0 chris_gibson rendev aix rootvg |
AME activation key identification
In a previous post I discussed how you can identify some of the different types of a PowerVM Capacity
on Demand (CoD) activation keys from IBM. Recently I had to Activate Memory Expansion (AME) on a
couple of POWER7 systems. I discovered that all of the keys contained a similar
string. It appears that if a CoD key contains the string CA1F0000000800 then it is safe to assume it will activate
AME for a particular system. e.g. 9741EF3AE6969F17 CA1F0000000800 419D 937A1240F00F5B05 CA1F0000000800 413D And while I’m talking about AME,... [More]
Tags:  lshwres ca1f0000000800 active_memory_expansion powervm ame power7 chris_gibson curr_mem_expansion chhwres mem_expansion pend_mem_expansion aix dlpar |
Replicated rootvg, ghostdev and NPIV
My team and I have recently
been trying to stream line our AIX disaster recovery process. We’ve been
looking for ways to reduce our overall recovery time. Several ideas were tossed
around such as a) using a standby DR LPAR with AIX already installed and using
rsync/scp to keep the Prod & DR LPARs in sync and b) using alt_disk_copy
(with the –O flag for a device reset) to clone rootvg to an alternate disk
which is then replicated to DR. These methods may work but are cumbersome to
administer and (in the case of alt_disk_copy) require... [More]
Tags:  chris hds recovery led rootvg fc support ghostdev replication lpar hung gibson 554 boot replicated chris_gibson vfc vsp aix san channel virtual fibre dr disaster npiv hang |