HMC Console necessary?

Can anyone tell me what difficulty we would have if we did away with our HMC
Console to operate our Model 520? It's become very fragile, limping along,
and it seems we only need it to shut down (and start up) our two partition
520. We have never used it to reconfigure the two partitions.

Is there some other way we would be able to manage the two partitions
WITHOUT the HMC?


Along the same lines, we are working with IBM to configure a new 8202-E4B
and my prejudice against a new HMC is showing. I believe we need it to be
able to configure and manage the micro-partitions we will be needing on the
new box, but is there any other solution? Perhaps a remote software method
to do what the HMC does? Maybe a Virtualization manager? The new HMC adds
up to almost $10K for what (I believe) amounts to a glorified PC that runs a
single application, the System Manager. We can't even use it for anything
else. We don't have a single PC that costs that much. We know that the new
HMC could be used to manage both the old and new systems, but maybe we could
do away with both HMC's?

Any thoughts, or am I just exposing my ignorance?

Thomas Garvey