System plans

A system plan is a specification of the hardware and the logical partitions contained in one or more systems. You can use system plans in a number of ways that are useful for managing your system.

For example, you can use a system plan to create a record of hardware and logical partition configuration data for a system, to create a set of system specifications for ordering a system, or to deploy logical partitions to a system. A system plan is stored in a system-plan file, which has a file suffix of .sysplan. A system-plan file can contain more than one system plan, although multiple plans in a single file are not common. After you create a system plan, you also can view, delete, and export the system plan.

System plans have a number of valuable uses. For example, you can use system plans to accomplish the following goals:

You can create a system plan as a means of capturing up-to-date system documentation. The system plan provides a record of the hardware and logical partition configuration of the managed system at a given time.
You can use a system plan that you create for system documentation as part of your disaster recovery planning. On the Hardware Management Console (HMC), you can export the system-plan file to an offsite location or to removable media for offsite storage so that you have the system documentation that you need available if you must recover a managed system. On the Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM), you can export the system-plan file to the local file system, which you then can copy to an offsite location or to removable media for offsite storage.
Note: Although the system plan contains a large amount of system configuration information, it does not contain all the configuration information for a system. Consequently, the system plan is not intended to provide complete system documentation.
You can use system plans as audit records to track system hardware resources for accounting and accountability purposes by exporting the information in them to a spreadsheet.
You can use system plans to help you plan new workloads that require additional system and hardware resources. You can use a system plan, along with appropriate capacity planning information, to make decisions about whether your current system can handle a new workload.
You can create a system plan based on one managed system and deploy the system plan on another system to more quickly and easily create logical partitions on that system.
You can use the System Planning Tool (SPT) to design a managed system based on workload data from your current systems, based on new workloads that you want the managed system to support, based on sample systems that are provided with the utility, or based on your own custom specifications. You can then use the system plan to order a system based on the specifications that the system plan contains. Also, you can use the HMC or the IVM to deploy the system plan to configure an existing system when the target system meets the requirements for deployment.

You can create a system plan by using one of the following methods:

IBM® System Planning Tool (SPT) – you can create a system plan to capture the configuration of a system or systems that you want to order. A system-plan file created in the SPT can contain more than one system plan, although multiple plans in a single file are not common.
Hardware Management Console (HMC) – you can create a system plan that documents the configuration of a system that is managed by the HMC.
Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM) – you can create a system plan that documents the configuration of a system that is managed by the IVM.