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]

Tags:  power8 redhat ubuntu s812lc tyan powerkvm openpower

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]

Tags:  hat openpower l4 ubuntu tyan spark controller mike opal s812lc power8 pearson habanero red powerkvm hadoop cache

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]

  Warning: If you get the nslim or dd commands wrong then you  will destroy your LU virtual disks & virtual machine content.   Please tell me, if you do - I enjoy a good laugh :-) Please, test the commands & your understanding on a test SSP!   Shared Storage Pool four Ksh script commands and a program that I hope you will find useful:   ncluster - status of all VIOS   nlu - improved lu replacement   npool - storage pool use   nmap - finds if a lu is online (mapped) on any VIOS   nslim - copy... [More]

I have been asked a couple of times for something like this for Shared Storage Pools (SSP) and I don't know of an official Best Practice and FAQ so here goes. This will always be a work in progress and covers new SSP releases as new features arrive - last updated March 2017 -  NEW  I have had loads of input/ from the VIOS SSP developers too, so its not just my thoughts and jokes!!   If you have a question or a good tip or suggestion PLEASE: make a comment and I will include it. Shared Storage Pool - Best Practice and FAQ... [More]

A POWER user asked ATS: "How to replace an old HMC (7042-CR4) for a new model HMC (7042-CR8) with the latest software?" Out of the two of us: my colleague Gareth Coates is by far the HMC expert and so I deferred to him and here is the response.   The HMC documentation and Redbooks don't seem to cover a HMC hardware replacement but it is simple to do - if you just treat it as a software upgrade only to a different machine. Fortunately, if you unplug your old CR4 after the backup then you have a very simple recovery... [More]