Re: Guest Partitions

Jack

An iASP lives on whatever partition you have. So, yes, I think that could be an extension of the hosting LPAR. It might take away the need for a separate LPAR. Jerry mentioned auditors wanting things separate for development and production - with stand-alone IASPs, that can be accomplished completely on the same LPAR. The libraries in an IASP are added to the libraries in SYSBAS. And you can't have 2 ASP groups attached to your job at the same time, so they are truly mutually exclusive.

I see no reason it couldn't go on a hosted LPAR - that is an LPAR unto itself, a complete machine. It's an interesting concept, definitely.

The whole thing uses a *DEVD for the IASP and you have to vary it on to make it available. But you can vary on only the ones you need. Lots of interesting stuff with them. Then there is the shared IASP scenario that helps with HA.

As to the disks, iASPs need to work with full disk units. Now the size can vary - if you want partial disks, you'd need to virtualize stuff. I don't know the details, but it probably has to do with VIOS.

IBM network storage devices can be made to look like native DASD, and anything from that is usable, so long as it looks like DASD. Non-IBM stuff might not work. I've not had to deal with that. I did some testing a few years ago with IBM, to be "StorageProven" on like the DS4xxx or whatever those models are.

Does that help? There's a Redbook out there - there are limits on what kinds of objects can go into and iASP, but that is usually not a problem.

Vern

On 3/17/2011 2:05 PM, Jack Kingsley wrote:

Vern, wouldn't iASP be an extension of the hosting lpar or could you attach
them to a host/client scenario as well. Can iASP be dedicated drives or
must they be SAN/FIBRE.

On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 2:37 PM, Vern Hamberg<vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi Rogers

Almost all of these advantages are yours if you use stand-alone
independent ASPs, too. And you don't need to use FTP to move things
around. IASPs have been described as mini-LPARs - they have their own
system catalog for database - in fact, they can be set up as a separate
RDB from the one in SYSBAS.

A nice option for some - worth investigating.

Vern

On 3/17/2011 11:26 AM, Laine, Rogers wrote:

Jerry,

You would define two partitions, the Production (Hosting) and the Test
partition.
On the Hosting partition you would define disk storage(Network Storage)
for Test.
When you build the TEST partition you would point it to the Network
Storage defined on the Hosting partitions.
The Network Storage would be separate from each partition, so you would
still need to FTP objects between them.
When Test is shut down the Network Storage would still exist on the
Hosting partition, nothing would be lost.

Now if the Hosting partition would be shut down the Test partition would
be unavailable, since the disk is part of the Hosting partition, so it
would need to be stopped before Host is shutdown.

So with this setup the Test environment would be shielded from
Production for testing. They can also have different levels of the
operating system.

Tape drive and DVD drives can be shared too.

Hope this helps explain your concerns.....

Rogers

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jerry C. Adams
Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2011 9:19 AM
To: Midrange-L
Subject: Guest Partitions

I have a BP coming in next week to give us a proposal for a Power 7
system.
One of the questions that came up, when we were talking about our
needs/wants was partitioning so that, unlike today on our V5R1 machine,
I
could have a test environment separate from production.



This morning remembered some mention of a guest partition capability
when
6.1 was announced. I read some links that Rob provided but, admittedly,
I'm
still just a tad confused or unsatisfied. That is, the 6.1 technical
overview showed how to set up a client partition, but not how to use it



In a previous incarnation I had access to two [2] physical machines; one
for
production and one for development/testing. In 7.1 can/does this guest
(client) partition insulate the host partition (what would be in my case
Production) from updates made in the client? In the 2-box scenario I
ftped
libraries back and forth between the boxes; would that be the same
methodology for the client partition scenario? And when the client
partition is ended (the Redbook didn't go into whether this could be
done or
how, but I figured it could be), do the libraries/objects in the client
just
disappear automagically?



Except for migrating objects between host and client, and using IBM i
and
disk space, I don't anticipate sharing resources. That is, such things
as
the tape drive, DVD drive, etc. But what the heck do I know. Anyway, I
just want to be able to set up a test environment that shields
production
from my tests.



Jerry C. Adams

IBM i Programmer/Analyst

--

A&K Wholesale

Murfreesboro, TN

615-867-5070

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