RE: LPAR Question -- MIDRANGE-L

If all of those things you mentioned need to be done, then I would 
definitely go the BP route.  What I was getting at, is that I do not think 
I have any special hardware requirements, unless I cannot share the CD 
drive easily between the partitions.  I do not care about having backup 
for both partitions.  I just want to be able to do something like create a 
second partition and tell it to use xx GB of DASD, xx MB of RAM and xx% of 
CPU.

Do I have to dedicate disk by partition?  I was assuming I could just draw 
from a common pool of disks?

Thanks, it sounds like we will go with a BP.  We already have a list of 
local BP's with experience at LPAR configs.

Mark








"Andy Nolen-Parkhouse" <aparkhouse@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
11/13/2003 12:18 PM
Please respond to Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
 
        To:     "'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'" 
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        Subject:        RE: LPAR Question


Mark,

I'm one of those who recommend expert business partners for LPAR.  I used 
to
configure and install LPAR boxes for a business partner so I'll give it a
stab.  The heavy lifting in an LPAR configuration is not in running it but
ordering the correct hardware.  If you're technically competent, familiar
with work management, and study the documentation; then I don't doubt that
you'll do well.  But if you've never used IBM's configuration tools and
aren't familiar with the hardware requirements for an LPAR box, then 
you're
better off getting an expert opinion.

On most standard single-partition boxes, you just say how many drives of
what capacity, how many NIC's, and so on.  Things can fall together fairly
well and most business partners can configure the machine appropriately.
When you get into partitions, you as a customer need to know the hardware
requirements for each partition and the person that does the configuration
needs to be able to translate that into hardware.  Generally the entire
system is planned with the location of each card mapped out, which 
partition
each card is assigned to, and which cards are shared between partitions.

It gets rather complicated.  I've met people who ordered their own box 
with
the intent of implementing LPAR (they didn't tell the BP), but when push
came to shove, they didn't have a CD-ROM drive in the appropriate 
partition
to load the OS.  So unless you want to do a lot of homework for something
you're only going to do once, you're probably better off ordering from
someone with experience or using a consultant to verify your 
configuration.

Also, when you order a machine with the intent of LPAR, the factory will
install all of the hardware, but the cards and drives will need to be
rearranged to their proper locations, then you do a scratch install in 
each
partition.  Depending on how you fell about shoving around hardware and
loading operating systems, you may want experienced help for this also.

I'm sure that you'll be able to figure out how to run the thing Mark, the
documentation is pretty good - it's in the ordering and the installation
where additional help can be required.

Kind Regards,
Andy Nolen-Parkhouse

> On Behalf Of Mark Phippard
> Subject: LPAR Question
> 
> I have an LPAR question for you BP's and experts on the list.  I have 
seen
> messages about how you should work with an experienced BP to do your
> configs etc...  My question is that only necessary in a "real world"
> situation or is it always necessary because LPAR is so complicated?  I 
can
> see where if I had 2 or 3 locations running on LPAR and they all needed
> backups etc. that there would be hardware issues to consider, but that 
is
> not our situation.
> 
> We want to replace a pure QA box with something like a Model 800 or 810,
> but we would like to LPAR that box so that we can do stuff like load 
beta
> releases of OS/400 on the second partition and also just so that we can 
do
> more testing of our products in an LPAR environment.  This box doesn't
> really "matter".  We would not be doing much for backups or other 
things,
> we just want to be able to do the LPAR.  Is this something where we can
> just do it ourselves or do we really need to plan for it?
> 
> We do our boxes on lease through PartnerWorld, but we can contract with 
a
> local BP on services if it is necessary.
> 
> Thanks




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