Booting in LPAR mode from an NVMe device

6.10 LPAR mode

Use the SE or HMC to boot Linux® in LPAR mode from a Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) device.

Before you begin

  • NVMe IPL devices are supported for IBM® LinuxONE III as of the firmware upgrade of November 2020.
  • You need an NVMe device that is prepared with zipl.

Procedure

Perform these steps to boot from an NVMe boot device:

  1. In the navigation pane of the HMC, expand Systems Management and select the hardware system that you want to work with. A table of LPARs is displayed on the Partitions tab in the content area.
  2. Select the LPAR where you want to boot Linux.
  3. In the Tasks area, expand Recovery and click Load as shown in the following graphic:
    Figure 1. Load task on the HMC
    Screen capture of the Hardware Management Console. In the Tasks area, expand the Recovery list and click Load.
  4. Proceed according to your hardware level to specify details about the load process.

    Follow these steps for IBM z16™ with the updates of May 2023.

    1. Select device type NVMe as shown in Figure 2.
      Figure 2. Load panel for booting from an NVMe disk with device type selection
      Screen capture of the Load panel for NVMe load showing the controls for the steps that follow.
    2. Select load type Load an OS.

    For earlier hardware levels, select load type NVMe load.

    Note: Do not select Clear main memory before loading check box unless you must clear memory. Memory clearing can considerably prolong the IPL procedure.
  5. Enter the PCIe function ID of the NVMe device in the Load address field. You can omit leading zeroes.
  6. If the boot configuration is part of a zipl created menu configuration, type the configuration number that identifies your boot configuration within the menu in the Boot program selector field.
    Configuration number 0 specifies the default configuration.
  7. Optional: For boot images in the secure-boot format, select the Enable Secure Boot for Linux option. For more information about secure boot, see Secure boot.
  8. Optional: Type kernel parameters in the Operating system specific load parameters field.
    These parameters are concatenated to the end of the existing kernel parameters that are used by your boot configuration when booting Linux.

    Use ASCII characters only. If you enter characters other than ASCII characters, the boot process ignores the data in the Operating system specific load parameters field.

  9. Accept the defaults for the remaining fields.
  10. Click OK to start the boot process.

What to do next

Check the output on the preferred console to monitor the boot progress.