Re: HMC Console necessary?

Well the obvious of course, you cannot do any changes to any partition. You would need to change the system to OS managed for FSP Firmware and designate one of the partition as a service partition BEFORE you do away with the HMC. You will also need to convert the console to LAN console (most likely anyway) or you won't have a console. You also will have NO way of seeing SRC codes for a partition because when there is more than one they don't show on the panel. Also if you ever PWRDWNSYS one of the partitions the only way to get it back up is to PWRDWNSYS the other one and the system itself and then restart the entire machine. This will only work if you have both partition set to autostart. You could find yourself unable to do a manual IPL and would NOT be able to ever restore the system from tape should that be needed.

In short my opinion on removing the HMC is: Bad Idea.

Personally I would move in the new HMC and manage both systems with it. You say it's 'Fragile' but don't say what that means. Is it old, is way behind on fixes or versions? Has it been mistreated (i.e. overheated, powered off abnormally multiple times, never backed up?) I have found the HMC to be the best console ever. I also suspect the $10K Price is for both an HMC AND a new flat panel with keyboard. The old one of those normally works just fine with the new HMC and that will save you a bunch.

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis.

On 12/7/2010 4:53 PM, Thomas Garvey wrote:

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