Re: LIC re-install - Confused on the steps to take

Number 5 ! It's Alive! Man, how long has it been since I have seen *that* flick (Short Circuit)?

No sweat on the reply. When you struggle, you learn. Sometimes it is the best way to learn. The mirroring "fixing" the LIC load I can understand. What baffles me a bit on the cume fix to an I/O issue is that the blade would fail even though the partition wasn't active. In fact I could pretty much make it fail at will. I had asked the BC guys if just having an i partition *defined* was enough to cause the failure. Internally, the IBMer I was working with said the jury was still out: He seemed to think the partition definition *was* enough to have the blade fail, others said no way.

Right now the partition is showing 1.53 days active which is about as long as it has been running in the past 4 weeks. My plan is to run a backup from VIOS to tape. I had unplugged the tape drive a few days ago after the blade was consistently failing. Right now I am 1700 miles away from the BCS so I will have to rely on my Simulated Onsite Nerd (aka son) to plug the thing in for me. Then I'll bang on it.

Hope you resolve the issues with Number 5. Curiously, I have had issues corresponding with the IBMer in Raleigh. The reason: Notes has been having problems for the past two weeks for him.

Pete


lbolhuis@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Pete,

Things that make you go Hmmm. First off glad to here progress was made.
Second it absolutely DOES make sense that a PTF could affect the I/O to
VIOS and consequently the stability of the thing. Third yes a busted MIRROR
would likely make doing a LIC replacement impossible so good you go them
seeing double again. Heck you might have updated LIC the first time and
then booted the OTHER of the mirrored pairs which wasn't updated! OK maybe
not but it would answer the question of where o where did the LIC go.

Oddly enough I DID respond and yes I'm still having Issues with 'Number 5'
(the laptop) and mostly they are with Notes 8.0.3. Some inbound messages
just can't be found and some outbound ones apparently go away *poof*. I
started wondering why you didn't respond to ME before I figured out my post
never made it to the list....

I would proceed with the maximum I/O stress test. Do heavy I/O in i5/OS at
the same time you're copying to tape and such like that. Beat it up and it
better take it with a smile!

On a side note I did PTFs today on the very smallest 8203 that one could
buy (which would be quite comparable to your BCS setup.) Load and apply of
the V6R1 Cume, Hiper, DB, JAVA and HTTP groups from image catalogs took
over 4 hours and that's NOT including the IPL (which we just couldn't bear
to watch). Some individual PTFs loaded for 20 minutes!! No matter how much
horsepower that Power6 chip has the two mirrored SAS drives in the CEC
couldn't be hurried and averaged 100.0 percent busy the entire 4 hours.
(Gee, I wonder where the bottleneck is??) On the up-side though, no VIOS
to update, no SAS module to wonder about, 1/3 the size, can back up
directly to the internal LTO-4 tape drive with native commands, and can be
carried by a mere mortal as well.

Blade center may be our future but IBM is selling them NOW. (ooOOoh IBM are
you listening??? oooOOooh!)



Larry Bolhuis IBM Certified Advanced Technical Expert:
Vice President System i Solutions
Arbor Solutions, Inc. IBM Certified Systems Expert:
1345 Monroe NW Suite 259 System i Technical Design and Implementation
V6R1
Grand Rapids, MI 49505
(616) 451-2500
(616) 451-2571 - Fax
(616) 260-4746 - Cell

If you can read this, thank a teacher....and since it's in English, thank
a soldier.



Pete Helgren <Pete@xxxxxxxxxx> Sent by: To midrange-l-bounce Midrange Systems Technical s@xxxxxxxxxxxx Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx> cc 05/12/2009 07:55 PM Subject Re: LIC re-install - Confused on the steps to take Please respond to Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@midra nge.com>



24 hours and still running with no part replacements or VIOS update.
That puzzles me even further. Was the resumption of mirroring the fix?
Does the latest CUME have a patch that corrected some I/O issue? What
puzzles me further is that the blade was locking up even without firing
up the i partition. Now it just seems to run!

I still need to try a few things to see if I can break it consistently
again. cfgdev in VIOS seemed to always hammer the blade. Saving to
tape from VIOS was also a good way to crash the blade. So, I need to
try it and see what happens, now that I have parts handy...

Pete


Lukas Beeler wrote:

On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 15:57, Pete Helgren <Pete@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Some progress at last.

Glad to hear.

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