RE: Can VPM be used on system with HMC?

That's why you need a business partner with the technical chops to configure everything and make it work! We don't have the in-house expertise to virtualize the tape drives to all of our iSeries LPARs, but they do! And it all works ver nicely!

--Paul E Musselman

.

At 7:19 AM -0500 4/24/18, Jim Oberholtzer wrote:

Rob:

Many (most) shops do not have the will, desire, nor expertise to put up VIOS
to virtualize tape/Ethernet, even while leaving storage in direct
connection. To be honest, unless you are making the jump all the way to a
dual VIOS setup it hardly makes sense to add that level of complexity to the
server when CLP/SSH can effectively do the job for small environments.
There are exceptions to that rule but the will be far between each other.
Also remember the level of complexity and expense (Fibre switches are not
cheap) to set that up. A CL program and SSH key are free.
That said, you are absolutely correct, once VIOS has the tape virtualized,
it's a breeze to manage and by far and away the best choice.
--
Jim Oberholtzer
Agile Technology Architects


-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rob
Berendt
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2018 6:52 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: Can VPM be used on system with HMC?

I agree, why would anyone want to use VPM if they have an HMC?

However, I wonder why one would even need to dynamically move the tape
library around. We have ONE fiber channel port coming out of our Power 8.
It is controlled by a VIOS lpar. It goes to a SAN switch. From there it
goes to our tape library. Our tape library has multiple drives. All the
lpars of IBM i can do a WRKMLBSTS and see the library, and it's drives:
Device/
Resource Status Allocation
KDVLVTL VARIED ON
TAP13 OPERATIONAL UNPROTECTED
TAP16 OPERATIONAL UNPROTECTED
TAP20 OPERATIONAL UNPROTECTED
TAP22 OPERATIONAL UNPROTECTED
TAP23 OPERATIONAL UNPROTECTED
TAP31 OPERATIONAL UNPROTECTED
TAP32 OPERATIONAL UNPROTECTED
TAP33 OPERATIONAL UNPROTECTED

Each lpar can run backups at the same time as other lpars as long as you do
not exceed the number of drives.
We have so many drives we tell BRMS to back up using four drives at a time.
So we do stagger our backup times a little.

But if you just HAVE to dynamically lpar (like perhaps you have an
insistence on SCSI connection for some strange reason) then there are ways
to execute commands on the HMC from programs on IBM i to get it to do so
automatically. Al Barsa used to peddle a product to do this


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





From: "Jim Oberholtzer" <midrangel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'"
<midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 04/23/2018 06:48 PM
Subject: RE: Can VPM be used on system with HMC?
Sent by: "MIDRANGE-L" <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx>



You are correct, you cannot use VPM, but then again why would you want to
when you have the HMC right there? It's not that hard to set up a CL
program that can move the tape devices for you (sending commands to the
HMC via SSH) so you don't even need to sign on to the HMC.

Assuming the classic interface moving a device is simple and once you done
it, it'll stick in memory.

--
Jim Oberholtzer
Agile Technology Architects


-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Thomas Garvey
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2018 5:20 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Can VPM be used on system with HMC?

Hi,

I need to create a hosted partition on my Power7 server.
We have v7r3 and need a v7r1 partition that shares the tape library and
optical drive.
Thought I might use Virtual Partition Manager to do it but we use HMC to
manage our several servers.
Does having an HMC preclude being able to use the VPM?
I tried starting it through STRSST and got the following...

Logical Partitioning Environment Not Supported
System: S107603P
Virtual Partition Manager is not supported and this service function
cannot be started. The system is in a state that does not allow this
operating system to partition the server. Refer to the Virtual Partition
Manager documentation for more information.

If VPM is not an option, I'll have to look for that slideshow
presentation where someone gives a step by step on how to do it with the
HMC.
<<< I've got it here somewhere :::::: >>

Best Regards,

Thomas Garvey