HMC functionality

<snip>
>From Al Barsa:
but my @#$%ing HMC has all my partitions down at the moment.
</snip>

Al,

With all due respect, the HMC cannot force your partitions to be down and
the system can live quite happily without HMC.  Granted you need the HMC
for any partition changes, activating inactive partitions, and a few other
odds and ends, but the HMC does not force partitions down.  HMC maintenance
can be done while the system is running with no interruptions, and it does
not even need to be attached to the managed system. Many of us in the field
accomplish these things quite often without any system outage.

The only other thing I can think of is if you are applying fixes to the SP,
yes, then all the partitions must be inactive, but that is still not the
HMC.  Making changes to the partition profile may require a partition to be
reactivated, but that does not sound like the issue and is not the fault of
the HMC.

What in the HMC, other that OEM software accessing APIs, or user error,
causes partitions to be inactive?

Jim