Re: HMC Console necessary?

I despised the HMC when it first came out. Now, I love it. I just used
it again to allow me to do some full system saves from the comfort of home
last night.

Get your HMC upgraded to the latest release supported by your FSP. If
your FSP is way behind then you may need to upgrade that. We had let our
HMC get 2 VERSIONS behind. So we had to leap frog: Upgrade HMC, upgrade
firmware, upgrade hmc, upgrade firmware until we got to current.

Some people do something silly; they run an HMC but have their firmware
set to upgrade from OS ptf's. If they do not keep up their hmc software
what eventually happens is that the HMC can no longer control their box. I
wonder if that has happened to you? What level of HMC are you on? What
level of firmware are you on?

I suggest reading the following "HMC Operations" at
http://wiki.midrange.com/index.php/HMC_Operations
These will have steps on how to see
- what levels of HMC support what levels of firmware
- what firmware you are currently running
- what HMC code you are currently running
- where to get these upgraded.

Get everything upgraded. WebSM is no longer used.

We have two hmc's supporting three separate machines. I can run the
system consoles from either hmc (not at the same time however). With
remote access to the hmc and "shared" console sessions I often use my PC
instead of physically laying hands on the HMC.

I strongly suggest getting the latest HMC code (and firmware) and seeing
if that increases your stability before abandoning it or getting a new
HMC. Our main HMC was one of the original ones sent out. And I mean
"original". It's working great and I see no need to upgrade the hardware.

Rob Berendt
--
Group Dekko
Dept 1600
Mail to: 2505 Dekko Drive
Garrett, IN 46738
Ship to: Dock 108
6928N 400E
Kendallville, IN 46755
http://www.dekko.com





From: "Thomas Garvey" <tgarvey@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'"
<midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 12/08/2010 01:03 AM
Subject: RE: HMC Console necessary?
Sent by: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx



Thanks, Larry, for responding.

We've never been able to do any changes to any partition anyway, without
turning everything off and rearranging cards.

By fragile I meant that it will just freeze up, disallowing any use of the
System Manager application. Nothing communicates with the box (no mouse,
keyboard, etc), only the power off button. Then it will go through part
of
the boot process and freeze again, requiring another power off. The more
frequent that cycle is done, the shorter the IPL process is actually
completed. When we are faced with this circumstance, we usually try it
once, and if it fails, we just power it down for about 2 hours or so, and
try again, and it will usually work.
It is old (2005), probably behind on fixes, and considered a nuisance
because all we can do with it is power down or restart individual
partitions. It won't even let us do Web based System Manager anymore.

Our new configuration will have a new HMC in the rack with the i, disks,
UPS, etc. and does include the slide out flat panel and keyboard, and I
was
planning on managing both old and new i's with it, but the boss asked if
there was any way we could get rid of having to use HMC's and I couldn't
give a confirmed, I know for sure, response.

Thanks, again.

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of DrFranken
Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2010 8:43 PM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: 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

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