RE: Selecting a business partner for an upgrade

["Andy Nolen-Parkhouse" <aparkhouse@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bryan,

LPAR is more than just software.  The various disk controllers (and their
disks), the Ethernet cards, the console, the tape drive adapters, and a few
other things are located on the bus in particular locations.  Some of them
can be shared between partitions but can only be active on one partition at
a time, like a tape drive adapter.  Others would be firmly allocated to a
particular partition, like a disk controller.  The factory in Rochester does
not locate the appropriate hardware in the proper places in order for this
to happen.  When a partitioned box arrives at your location the first order
of business is to take it apart and put the hardware in the proper slots.

In addition, you need to order the machine with LPAR in mind.  If you were
planning on having 5 drives in each of two partitions for a total of ten
drives, you would need to ensure that you had two disk controllers, even
though ten drives can be driven by a single controller.  IBM's configuration
rules won't help you unless you define your LPAR configuration in advance
and order it correctly.

Regards,
Andy Nolen-Parkhouse

> Regarding LPAR however, what do you mean by "hardware work"?  I thought
> LPAR
> was all software.  We are just kicking around the LPAR idea and will
> probably upgrade to an 810 without making a decision on LPARing.  Can't we
> just LPAR at anytime?