I assume there are many installations which need to go to VIOS 3.1 by October 2020 due to end of support for VIOS 2.x. Because, I did not find any upgrade procedure for “dummies”, I decided to write one which I hope people find useful. I do not cover only the upgrade process itself, but also share some advises how to do it safely and recover in case of troubles. Upgrade Virtual I/O Server to 3.1 is completely different process than before. For instance, you are going to need an extra disk to perform the operation. Interested?
Category: POWER
IBM Technical University Prague 2019
I had a pleasure to attend IBM Technical University conference last week of October in Prague. I also have been given a chance to run four sessions. Read about the conference and other interesting facts below.
Enable classic HMC GUI on release V9R1 – locked with HMC fix
How many of you are missing the old classic HMC GUI? Since version V8R8.7.0 we can run only new Enhanced GUI+ interface. Thus, POWER9 machines can be managed only by the Enhanced+ interface, right? In this post you can find a procedure how to start the classic GUI. even on the HMC running latest FW9.1. Continue reading “Enable classic HMC GUI on release V9R1 – locked with HMC fix”
How to prevent situation when server IPL may affect SAS controller
Last weekend I had a very unpleasant situation. A server reboot made an entire machine unusable. It was very difficult issue, costing an unplanned outage. Actually, we had all series of unfortunate events that day. I got aged by few years, but also learn there is always a solution, event in a hopeless situation. Read the entire story to avoid a similar problem. Continue reading “How to prevent situation when server IPL may affect SAS controller”
(Updated) Meltdown & Spectre performance impact on IBMi and IBM Power Systems
Not sure if there is anyone in IT world who has not heard about latest vulnerabilities in the modern chips. In this post I cover performance impact caused by fixes on IBM Power Systems and and IBM i OS.
Continue reading “(Updated) Meltdown & Spectre performance impact on IBMi and IBM Power Systems”
Demand for extra CPU capacity? Use a bug in POWER8 firmware
This week I discovered very weird bug in the POWER8 firmware. With this bug it is possible to use entire server capacity without paying processor activation to IBM. Continue reading “Demand for extra CPU capacity? Use a bug in POWER8 firmware”
How to automate update of Access Keys for POWER8
The other day, I’ve wrote about POWER8 ‘feature’ which requires from an administrator update of access keys in order to keep a server eligible for the firmware upgrade POWER8 – No hardware maintenance-no firmware upgrade . An administrator needs to enter these every few months, if a maintenance contract is re-signed every few months. This can be a headache, or something bigger if someone runs multiple servers. There is a secret HMC function, which can update the keys automatically.
Continue reading “How to automate update of Access Keys for POWER8”
IBM i lpar crashed duo to Dynamic Platform Optimizer
Dynamic Platform Optimizer is a hypervisor function which rearranges logical partition processors and memory on the system to improve the affinity between processors, and memory of logical partitions. In this post I will describe when to use this function and how to prevent IBM i Lpar from crash. Continue reading “IBM i lpar crashed duo to Dynamic Platform Optimizer”
How to speed up your POWER server with no cost
In my previous post I’ve mentioned about the new HMC feature which can adjust CPU frequency. In this article I want to describe how to speed up the POWER system box, get more performance from the system. It is very easy to overclock the machine.
Continue reading “How to speed up your POWER server with no cost”
Blog anniversary and other hot topics
It’s been a year since I started the blog. Here are the most important facts after first year.
IBMi.org - Bart's blog 