kdump

The kdump tool is made available through a Linux® kernel and initial RAM disk that are preloaded in memory, along with a production system.

You do not have to install kdump on a dedicated dump device. The kdump system can access the memory that contains the dump of the production system through a procfs file.

Filtering out extraneous memory pages and compression can take place while the dump is written to persistent storage or transferred over a network. The smaller dump size can significantly reduce the write or transfer time, especially for large production systems.

IPLing the production system again clears the dump in memory, so the dump must be saved to persistent storage before a subsequent re-IPL.

Because kdump can write dumps though a network, existing file system facilities can be used to prevent multiple dumps from being written to the same storage space. Sharing space for dumps across an enterprise is possible.