Rob,
Everyone in the world isn't like you, so you need to be careful when you make this blanket statements, and people think they will be safe. Understand that you have an HMC in the picture as well, and that certainly makes things VERY different, as you can TAG your IOA. If you don't have an HMC, you don't have that luxury.
Pete
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Pete Massiello
iTech Solutions
http://www.itechsol.com
http://www.iInTheCloud.com
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of rob@xxxxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2013 7:43 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: B2003200
There seems to be a lot of confusion as to whether or not a fiber attached tape drive can be "an alternate IPL" device as well as "an alternate installation" device. There is a difference. An alternate IPL device can be used to start the system. Some alternate installation devices cannot be used as alternate IPL devices.
But I know that my fiber attached, via SAN, media library device, which doesn't even have the option to be configured sequential but has to be configured as random, can be used as an alternate IPL device. It's really important that you follow these steps here:
http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v7r1m0/topic/rzarm/rzarmprp.htm
In fact, you might want to step though steps 10-17 now instead of waiting for a high pressure situation. Especially those of you who focus more on development and rarely touch admin. Terms like "IOP" and how to determine which slot this is might be something you get set up before you're under the gun.
Did I also mention that my media library has six tape drives in it and is used by five lpars, one of which is Linux?
I think IBM has their ducks pretty much in a row now that if the devices isn't hooked up via TCP/IP it can be used as an alternate installation device. The TCP/IP interface that gives me a web interface into the tape drive doesn't count as a detractor. That's not how the data is exchanged.
Now, if you have one of these third party devices that does data deduplication and remotely echos your data to an offsite device I'd really question as to whether or not one of these can be used as an alternate IPL device.
Not being able to use it as an alternate IPL device is not the end of the world. Keep a LIC CD around for just such an emergency. But, frankly, with my multiple lpars it's easier to use the tape library. Done right, I can stick in that CD and every lpar will have a message in QSYSOPR that volume I_BASE has been mounted. Done wrong, and I have to hunt around and figure out how to move it from one lpar to another and hope to Christ that it's not "dedicated" to one lpar off of the same IOP that's running that LPAR's load source disk drive. Which may be one reason why we tend to shy away from using the disk slots in the CEC. I am sure that if I dinked with this enough I could get this virtualized properly and not have this issue.
Rob Berendt
--
IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM i 6.1 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
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