I have had a number of clients get into a mess with an AIX performance CritSit (Critical Situation) but they have forgotten to capture nmon data before the incident. So there is no "before and after "comparisons that can be made to highlight the change causing issues and likely causes.   Well, you might not know but AIX is automatically capturing performance data into the directory /etc/perf/daily/  by default. No action required by you. Now the bad news - it is using topasrec and recording it as raw binary data. Now the good news you... [More]

To get protection from the Spectre / Meltdown security issues you need a few items in place: 1) A systems firmware level that supports the protection All POWER9 systems firmware has this builtin You may need to upgrade your POWER7 or  POWER8 firmware to a recent version - which is Best Practice anyway 2)  The system firmware protection is actually switched on To check this use the HMC -> ASMI -> "System Configuration“ ->  "Speculative Execution Control“ To change the setting, first Power-Off the server (sorry) then go to the... [More]

I am getting this reported regularly. The techie usually confirms the server is in Max-Performance mode - Which would be my first question. Typically, don't say how they are monitoring the GHz. I am 99% sure they are using older commands and thus listing the nominal frequency and than never changes and mot the current frequency which bounces up to the highest GHz and stays there.  If the POWER9 is very large config = maximum CPU cores + maximum memory size + loads of high speed adapter (that can generate heat too) + if the model has... [More]

So I took the latest SUSE SLES 15 DVD for POWER to install them on my latest POWER9 server (S924) running the PowerVM Hypervisor and 100% failed to get this installed .  I asked around and no one was much help!   Below is what I did not know or realise at the time that cause my failure - in my defence they are not clearly documentation or assumed.   As an IBMer I can run SUSE SLES (and Red Hat RHEL) for skills enhancement and demos without paying for the licence. This is an excellent deal but then I would be demonstrating SLES to customers and... [More]

I am not going to cover actual Python coding here (well, may be, a little at the end) but the good and bad places to start and things to avoid. First used at the Hollywood, Florida and Rome, Italy IBM Technical University conferences - we call them TechU   Alternatives You could just search Google, YouTube, and many other places and find 10 billion hits You will quickly get totally swamped with options This is Nigel's starter pack for  a quick start. This is what I found very useful - You, of course, may be different !!! What... [More]

In 2016, I setup a Raspberry Pi with five temperature probes to measure in my computer room: Air Conditioning output temperature Room Temperature Three Temperatures at the rear exhaust of three larger servers You can find the article here:  Computer_Room_Temperature_Monitoring_with_a_Raspberry_Pi   I end up with a script that gets the date+time and 5 temperatures.  The data is saved in a Comma Separated Values file and then I run a bunch of scripts to generate .html web pages using Google Chart JavaScript graphs.  It took a... [More]

I get this question about twice a month so I thought I would answer it here and refer to this Blog Entry.   This is a non-trivial question as it is complicated.   If you are a " just give me the basics on the back of this envelope " sort of person then do one of the three below: If you want the real easy answer hire me for 10,000 €$£ (Euro Dollar Pounds) a day plus expenses and I will do it for you and teach you at the same time via "1 to 1" skills transfer. Or phone your local IBM Representative and get... [More]

A couple of times a month I get a question like this:  I have been sent 35 GB of nmon files covering the last month, about 6 servers with 40 LPARs (virtual machines) each server in total ~6000 files. How do I load that in to the nmon Analyser to see the graphs? My first reaction is: that is not my problem I wrote nmon for AIX and nmon for Linux and not the nmon analyser. If you stop and think, it is obvious that you are never ever going to load 35 GB in to Excel on a laptop with 8 to 16 GB of memory. Excel is likely to grind the laptop a... [More]

If you don't know VIOS is short for Virtual I/O Server then you are probably on the wrong page :-) NEW NEWS - May 2019 Updated VIOS levels became available in April/May 2019 Latest VIOS 2.2.6 version and recommended as the start point to upgrade is VIOS 2.2.6.41 (was 2.2.6.32) Getting to this level before the upgrade will remove possible problems. Latest VIOS 3.1 version and recommended as your final target is VIOS 3.1.0.21 (was 3.1.0.10) This has 270 fixes that are best added before you return your VIOS 3.1 to production mode.  ... [More]

I have been testing out the AIX libperfstat libraries new functions and got to the SSP ones. So I knock up this command to dump the config details that can be extracted.   So with 128 lines of C code we have the new command - I have not seen a new VIOS SSP command that outputs this data yet so this is new details that I think would help you rebuild a SSP if you had an accident or disaster. Command line interface # ./nsspconf -h Hint: [-v] [-h] List Shared Storage Pool info: global, disk including tier & failure group, LU... [More]

IBM POWER9 Enterprise Servers E950 & E980 have been publicly  announced. Here is your starter pack: Dates Announcement August 7th for both E950 & E980 17th August  - E950 Generally Available (GA)  i.e. shipping to clients 21st September - E980 2 nodes=  96 core GA 16th November - E980 4 nodes=192 core GA Quick Summery for Techies   Power Virtual User Group two 90 minutes Webinars on E950 and E980  Find the Power Virtual User Group here:  http://tinyurl.com/PowerVUG Host: Jyoti Dodhia, IBM Speaker: Nigel Griffiths, IBM Two... [More]

I am assuming the latest AIX release AIX 7.2 TL2 sp2 If you are installing on older AIX versions then you may have a harder time.   1) On your workstation in your browser go to   https://public.dhe.ibm.com/aix/freeSoftware/aixtoolbox/ezinstall/ppc/     2) Download: README-yum text file and then please read this!  In this current yum bundle and README version it says you have to download and install a new rpm.rte package I did this will the following command on a server on the internet wget --no-check-certificate... [More]

Initially, I had not planned to attend the Orlando Technical University but now we have the POWER9 half rolled out: IBM POWER9 AC922   for NVIDIA  GPUs for IBM PowerAI and all those exciting new HPC workloads IBM POWER9 Regular Scale-Out Servers like S922 and S924 plus L922 and S914 and the SAP-HANA variations H922 and H924 I asked the manager as I now need to talk face-to-face to my USA IBM counterparts about these servers and two more much larger servers coming out later this year.  My manager said I could... [More]

This is part two covering the POWER8 based Hardware Management Console The first part was covering the installation on the new POWER8 based Hardware Management Console. You can find it here: AIXpert Blog on HMC_7063_CR1_hardware_install_POWER8_based_HMC First a small recap on what we covered at the end of Part 1 about the network ports. Below we can see the lower HMC has three network ports in use. The low HMC has VGA screen and USB keyboard and USB mouse. Two power supply cable from the HMC to two different Power Distribution... [More]