Re: LPAR question - primary partition ??

One of two things John.

One, you have very dated information. The "Primary partition" was only
needed on older 8xx boxes and that genre.

Two, or your confusing some of the newer stuff.

Under the power 5 and above boxes there is something called an "FSP" or
Flexible Service Processor. What OS it runs is under speculation and will
probably spawn another useless thread. The FSP controls the other
partitions, even on a single partition machine. When you look at your
list of partitions the FSP won't show. It's in a different realm. It has
it's own fixes you should apply on occasion. The HMC (Hardware Management
Console) has a nice way to view your FSP level.

With power 6 (and 6.1 of the OS) not only do you have the FSP but you also
have the ability to share the disk from one partition on to others. It's
optional. We do it with some of our lpars. Instead of having to tie up
just the right balance of disk arms, RAID controllers and related stuff
between lpars you can put them all on one. Now instead of 30 disk arms
being split up where each lpar gets a set number all lpars now get 30 disk
arms to share from.

Since you are new to the box there's no chance you'll have to worry about
the older pre power 5 primary partition.

Rob Berendt