Those of you who run recent hardware, probably noticed the new HMC interface called Enhanced+ GUI available since the HMC Firmware 8.8.1 SP1. In this post I would like to share my point of view and give some advice for people who would like to use it. Continue reading “My few words about HMC Enhanced + interface”
Category: PowerVM
SR-IOV for POWER8 enterprise models GA
Few hours ago IBM has released the firmware which enables the SR-IOV functionality on E870/E880 servers.
10Gbit adapters and virtual ethernet speed
Last few months months I’m struggling with a speed of a virtual Ethernet adapters. Just buying and configuring 10Gbit adapters in the Shared Ethernet Adapter (SEA) will not boost your network speed to the network heaven. I give you few examples how the speed/bandwidth change for a VLAN, depending from the configuration.
Continue reading “10Gbit adapters and virtual ethernet speed”
Building multiple LPARs with dedicated I/O from the CLI
Hi,
Nowadays, I’m preparing for huge hardware delivery. I’m about to get dozen of MMD’s. The challenge is to configure them (LPAR profiles, VIOS, etc) as soon as possible. I found the way how to automate creation of multiple VIO/LPAR profiles including I/O configuration for multiple servers without knowing SN of the expansions drawers.
Continue reading “Building multiple LPARs with dedicated I/O from the CLI”
Monitor CPU, POOL utilization from PHYP cycles on POWER8
One of the most popular post on my blog, is the one about monitoring a CPU by CPU cycles dispatched by a POWER Hypervisor link.
With POWER8 we receive new attributes in lslparutil command.
Continue reading “Monitor CPU, POOL utilization from PHYP cycles on POWER8”
SR-IOV technology on POWER – my few words
Finally the announcement day arrived. POWER8 and SR-IOV have been introduced to the world, and I can share my experience from my last residency.
Single Root I/O Virtualization are not new adapters, but this is a new technology, standard, specification. In fact, it uses adapters which are on the market for some time already. Specification allows to get a slice of a physical adapter and assign it an LPAR. This feature requires a proper hardware, firmware, and all elements around it.
Continue reading “SR-IOV technology on POWER – my few words”
IBM i with VLAN tagged network
Have you ever think to run your IBM i machine with in IEEE 802.1Q standard, and use the capabilities which offers VLAN tagging? You might heard that your AIX, LINUX colleagues already use it for ages, but for IBM i, this technology is still not available. Well, it is possible! You can trunk multiple VLANs to one physical port, if you configure the POWER Hypervisor to handle this traffic. Continue reading “IBM i with VLAN tagged network”
Redbook residency – Austin 2014
Few days ago, I came back from IBM in Austin. It was my first time in Austin, homeland of POWER systems, chips, AIX and PowerVM development, but third residency in general. Continue reading “Redbook residency – Austin 2014”
viosvrcmd – the backdoor to the PHyp?
The title is provocative, but if we agree that Virtual I/O Server is part of the POWER Hypervisor it’s absolutely true. The command viosvrcmd is a HMC command which allows to perform any non-interactive VIO commands by a HMC user which has the taskrole authority – ‘VirtualIOServerCommand’ and visibility to a VIOS LPAR without be prompting for VIOS user and password.
Monitor CPU, POOL utilization from PHYP cycles
It’s important to know a CPU capacity used by a system. In IBM i world, we have a licpgm – 5761PT1 Performance tools. But what if you run other OS’s than IBM i, on the same POWER box. Or you run LPARs in different shared processor pools ? The most efficient might be tracking CPU cycles dispatched by the POWER Hypervisor. In this post I show you, how to interpret performance data collected by a HMC, and how to allow IBM i collects and display dispatched CPU cycles.
Continue reading “Monitor CPU, POOL utilization from PHYP cycles”
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