Re: LPAR for testing on a relatively small machine? -- MIDRANGE-L

Not to disagree with Pete on this one but, oh wait, I *can't* disagree with Pete on this one. *IF* you know VIOS then rock on with that. If you are a traditional IBM i (i5/OS (OS/400)) shop then i hosting i is absolutely the correct way to go. If you don't know AIX, learning VIOS is like learning a whole new operating system.... because it IS a whole new operating system and if it controls all your hardware then everything you do depends on it running. If VIOS was in control of all hardware in your shop, how well would you sleep at night......

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

On 6/21/2010 4:18 PM, Pete Massiello wrote:

Mark,

The problem is that if you use IVM, then VIOS is going to have to
own all the hardware. Yes, you are right this is a good implementation, but
most IBM i shops don't have the skills required to implement& Configure
VIOS if they are an i only shop. I recommend this when the shop has strong
AIX skills. For almost all my implementations, I have used virtual I on
hosted i and it has been easier for the customers.

Pete

Pete Massiello
iTech Solutions
http://www.itechsol.com

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-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mark S. Waterbury
Sent: Monday, June 21, 2010 2:26 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: LPAR for testing on a relatively small machine?

Sam:

Look at IBM's Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM) ... that lets you
create a guest partition that uses only virtual resources (DASD, LAN,
etc.) and so you do not need to dedicate any hardware resources (IOPs,
IOAs, DASD, etc.) or use an HMC to set it up, etc. -- see:

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/whitepapers/ivm.html

HTH,

Mark S. Waterbury

> On 6/17/2010 10:25 PM, Lennon_s_j@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Can we create an LPAR for testing on a relatively small machine? Any
thoughts from hardware experts would be appreciated, before we starting
digging into the manuals...

Here's the picture:

We have a 520 M25 running V6R1, 1 processor, 16GB memory with plenty of
spare CPU time.

We have 12 4328 disk units at Raid 5. 8 are 120mb, 4 are 100mb, for
over 1 TB of space. We could devote 25% of this to a test LPAR.

I believe we could share the CPU so that the existing production
partition would rarely be impacted (it would always get priority for
cycles).

But can we realistically split up 12 drives so that 25% goes to a new
LPAR? For continued production performance I think we'd want production
data spread across all 12 units.

Back in a former life on an earlier OS with much bigger machines, IIRC
we needed a separate disk controller for each LPAR, but I was much
further removed from hardware nuances then. (I'm still not all that
close...)

Thanks, Sam