RE: Guest Partitions

[rob@xxxxxxxxx]

I do not think it is 7.1 that makes twinax go away.  It is Power 7.  So, 
if you bought a Power 6 and loaded 7.1 on it you might be ok.  Then again 
it's your decision if you want to limit your hardware options just to 
support twinax.

You cannot just load HMC software on another device.  You have to use the 
dedicated device.  It's a heavily customized version of Linux.  I am sure 
that it also has some burned in bios or some such thing.

I never amended my stand against 3 drive raid sets.  One poster, however, 
said that if they are coming from a single drive B10 with 250 users on it 
running V1R2 then even a 3 drive raid set with newer drives will looking 
smoking impressive.  It's simply a perspective thing.  Ok, I did amend my 
stand.  Apparently it's not such an issue with SSD or Solid State Drives. 
I don't see you going that route.

We differ on what we define as host.  You could have LPAR1 host LPAR1A and 
LPAR1B and LPAR2 host LPAR2A and LPAR2B.  That would be two hosts in my 
definition.  I think your definition is that you have 1 system, let's say 
an 8203, running just firmware that hosts two lpars which may host other 
lpars.  Your definition is that there's one host - the system.  I am 
hoping you can see, if you follow my definition, that LPAR1 and LPAR2 
should still come down on occasion to perform full system saves and IPLs.
If you follow your definition the 8203 should still come down on occasion 
to perform firmware upgrades.
The exception is if you have a single lpar system with no hmc you could 
set the firmware to be upgraded via cumes of the lpar.
Never have the firmware upgraded by a partition if you have an HMC.  You 
could get into a situation where you have a level of firmware incompatible 
with the HMC.  In that case always use the hmc to upgrade firmware.  You 
have three things to keep upgraded:  HMC, firmware and IBM i.




Rob Berendt