Hardware validation on the HMC
During the hardware validation process, the HMC compares the hardware information in the system plan with the hardware available on the managed system to ensure that the system plan can deploy successfully to the target managed system.
- Processor and memory amounts, including 5250 commercial processing workload (5250 CPW) where applicable
- Physical I/O adapter placement
The hardware described in the system plan passes validation if it matches the hardware specified by the managed system. The hardware on the managed system can contain resources in addition to those resources specified in the system plan and still pass validation. However, the hardware on the managed system must at least match the hardware specified in the system plan.
For example, a system plan specifies a server with two processors, 8 GB of memory, and a specific placement of physical I/O adapters within the system unit. A server that contains two processors, 16 GB of memory, a matching placement of physical I/O adapters within the system unit, and an expansion unit with additional physical I/O adapters would allow the system to pass validation. A server that contains 4 GB of memory can cause the system to fail validation. A system plan can also fail validation if the system plan specifies one type of physical I/O adapter in a slot but the actual system unit has a different type of physical I/O adapter in that slot. However, if the system plan specifies an empty slot, the validation allows any type of physical I/O adapter to be in that slot on the actual system.
The HMC does not validate the disk drives that are attached to physical I/O adapters against the disk drives specified in the system plan. You must ensure that the disk drives installed in the managed system support the logical partition configuration that you want. The HMC also does not validate that internal drive bay cabling and external SCSI cabling with what is specified in a system plan that was created in the System Planning Tool (SPT). You must validate these items manually before you deploy the system plan. Embedded devices automatically pass hardware validation because they are embedded into the system and cannot be removed.
