I upgraded four HMC's this week to the new version of the HMC Code, V7R3.1.
I was very impressed with the GUI interface for the HMC. IBM has done a
fantastic job with this interface. I really like this as a replacement for
WebSM which always seemed to take forever to download all the graphics over
my VPN connections. The new Remote GUI interface was very fast. You just
enter
https://xxx.yyy.zzz.aaa address of your HMC and the GUI pops up.
Notice its https and not just http.
The HMC software has a nice "dashboard" of color indicators to denote the
health of the systems, and the ability to customize your welcome page. The
first install took a while to familiarize myself with the new GUI and where
everything was, but that was because I was used to navigating via the old
screens.
The upgrade was simple and easy, but I always like saving my Upgrade Data to
the DVD, as I have been burned on previous upgrades loosing the entire
config. After upgrading, I took my USB drive out of my pocket, stuck it
into the USB slot, and was able to Export the sysplan directly onto the USB
drive. Even better, I took the USB drive, inserted it into my PC and it saw
the sysplan immediately. The only thing that I was VERY disappointed in,
was that I opened the sysplan with the SPT tool, and it said "Sorry, this
wasn't created with SPT, so you can only VIEW it". Well, that sucked.
Especially since I had the latest SPT, and I hope that IBM fixes this.
Three things to note was you need to have more Virtual I/O defined for each
partition profile after you upgrade, as the minimum has increased. 2) The
directions stated that the FSP had to be at least 01_SF240_299, which mine
were all at 01_SF240_320. 3) There is a required MH PTF that MUST be
installed onto the HMC after you do the upgrade. Afterwards, when you did
look to see if the PTF had been installed, it wasn't too obvious that it had
been. You had to drag your cursor over the field for it to display, which I
thought was cheap. When I go to that HMC status screen, I want to see
immediately what PTFs have been applied.
There was the ability to do some replication, but I didn't have a chance to
play with this at the one customer with 2 HMCs. If anyone has any comments
on that, I would love to hear about it.
Pete Massiello
iTech Solutions
www.itechsol.com
midrange.com
