Power Enterprise Pool

Power® Enterprise Pool provides flexibility and value for Power Systems. A Power enterprise pool is a group of systems that can share Mobile Capacity on Demand (CoD) processor resources and memory resources.

You can move Mobile CoD resource activations among the systems in a pool with Hardware Management Console (HMC) commands. These operations provide flexibility when you manage large workloads in a pool of systems and helps to rebalance the resources to respond to business needs. This feature is useful for providing continuous application availability during maintenance. Not only can the workloads be easily moved to alternative systems but the processor activations and memory activations can be moved. Disaster recovery planning also is more manageable with the ability to move activations where and when they are required.

Power Enterprise Pool configuration requirements

There are three different types of pools:
  • The Power 770+, E870, E870C, and E880C pools
  • The Power 780+, 795, E880, E870C, and E880C pools
  • The Power E870, E880, E870C, E880C, and E980 pools
Note: POWER7 systems are not allowed in the same pool as POWER9 systems.
The Power 770 and 780 systems require a minimum of four static processor activations. The Power E870, E880, 870C, E880C, and E980 require a minimum of eight static processor activations. The Power 795 requires a minimum of 24 static processor activations. 50% of memory must be active for all systems, and a minimum of 25% of the active memory must be static memory.

An HMC can manage multiple Power Enterprise Pools and can also manage systems that are not part of a Power Enterprise Pool. Systems can belong to only one Power enterprise pool at a time.

Master HMC and managing Hardware Management Consoles

The master HMC authorizes all Power enterprise pool change operations. It also performs all pool change operations for the servers that it manages. A managing HMC is an HMC that you have designated to the master HMC of a pool as a managing HMC for the pool. A managing HMC can be directed by the master HMC to perform pool change operations for the servers that are not managed by the master HMC.

All managing Hardware Management Consoles must have an active network connection to the master HMC. The Hardware Management Consoles can communicate on either a public or a private network. The Hardware Management Consoles communicate by using the standard Resource Monitoring and Control (RMC) port 657. The master HMC communicates with all managing Hardware Management Consoles and all managing Hardware Management Consoles communicate with the master HMC. Managing Hardware Management Consoles do not communicate with each other, except when you are setting a managing HMC as the new master HMC for the pool. The master HMC and all managing Hardware Management Consoles must be on the same network.

Use static IP addresses for HMC-to-HMC communication.

You can perform the following tasks by using any managing HMC, including the master HMC:
  • View pool information
  • Add Mobile CoD resources to a server
  • Remove Mobile CoD resources from a server
  • Set a new master HMC for the pool
  • Synchronize pool information
The following tasks must be performed on the HMC designated as the master HMC:
  • Create pool
  • Update pool (including updating the pool name)
  • Recover pool
  • Update the managing HMC list for the pool