Power restoration, the HMC and the i5

["Pete Helgren" <pete@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Maybe you folks can fill in some blanks on the i5, UPS and HMC.  My
customer's i5 dropped like a rock last night when they had an unscheduled
power outage.  This morning, the system had not come back on line and the
HMC just flat out wouldn't start.  We called IBM and while waiting for a
callback from the service guy, we messed around with the cord on the HMC and
toggled the 230/115 switch in the back (curiously it was set for 230v).
Anyway, the thing miraculously revived itself (Since this is the second time
the HMC has failed to power up we are assuming that either the switch or the
power supply has problems).  In any case, this whole HMC/UPS thing brought
up a bunch of questions that the IBM service guy couldn't answer.  So I am
turning to the experts.

1. The i5 dropped because it didn't have a cable to the UPS (1/2 million
dollar machine and they can't include a $15.00 cable?).  Do we also need a
cable to the HMC?  If not, how does the HMC know to "wake up" when the power
is restored and start an IPL?  

2. Are there HMC settings that tell it what partitions to start and how to
start them?

3. If it turns out that the HMC power supply or switch is bad, can you shut
down the HMC without affecting the active partitions or do we have to shut
down everything to service the HMC?

Yeah the i5 dropped because we didn't have a cable and the QPWRRSTIPL system
value was 0 not 1, but it cannot be changed. I get an error:

Message ID . . . . . . :   CPF1221       Severity . . . . . . . :   80

Message type . . . . . :   Diagnostic

Date sent  . . . . . . :   08/24/04      Time sent  . . . . . . :   11:27:33

 

Message . . . . :   Service processor failed.

Cause . . . . . :   Return code X'00FF' was received from the service

  processor. VLOG dump identifier 010009E9 has more information about the

  problem.

Recovery  . . . :   Contact your service representative to report the
problem. 

The service representative was HERE and he didn't know why we got that
error....

Just want to make sure the i5 comes back up the next time power fails.

Me, I am just a programmer and applications specialist, not a hardware guy.
Not sure I feel comfortable with $500,000 in hardware being dependant on
$2000 hardware. Have we just poked a hole in the iSeries reliability? 


Pete Helgren
Value Added Software,Inc.
801.581.1154 x202