Earlier this month I wrote about PowerVM Live Partition Mobility and Simplified Remote Restart, and I hope you want to get your I/T environment LPM and SRR capable to exploit these features.
This week, I’m going to review the PowerVM LPM/SRR Automation tool in detail.
As I wrote before, LPM is a feature of Power Systems servers that enables a virtual machine (logical partition, or LPAR) to be relocated to another system while it’s running, with no downtime. SRR allows an admin to restart partitions from a failed server to another server. These capabilities are quite similar in helping IBM Power Systems clients to move applications between servers.
The LPM/SRR automation tool, which is delivered by IBM Systems Lab Services, has quickly grown in popularity since its launch in early 2015, with over 240 customers world-wide using this tool.
Here are some of the LPM/SRR automation tool’s top benefits:
- Ease of use: The tool is easy to install and easy for clients to learn how to use; they can master its basic features in just a few hours.
- Time savings: The LPM/SRR tool can save clients a lot of time moving applications between servers. If you don’t have the tool, you can only do one mobility at a time through the Hardware Management Console or PowerVC. With the tool, you can do about 16 at a time, in parallel rather than serially.
- Advanced features: The LPM/SRR tool includes features like the ability to easily remap PowerVM configurations from IBM POWER7 to IBM POWER8 (HBA mappings, V-switch mappings, shared processor pools and so forth). Clients moving to a newer version of IBM Power Systems can therefore redesign their PowerVM mappings onto the new servers with ease.
If you’re looking to learn more, I’ve created a series of videos to demo the LPM/SRR automation tool. Please check out my YouTube playlist for demos, presentations on why clients need this tool and much more.
There are also some longer, more-detailed videos available for those interested in in-depth information about the tool:
- LPM SRR Automation Tool—a presentation on the LPM/SRR tool including new features in V8.5
- Simplified Remote Restart—a presentation on what SRR is and why clients need it, as well as some information on the LPM/SRR tool
The tool can be installed on AIX systems or Linux systems or Windows systems. It’s also capable of running in IBM PASE for i (Portable Application Solutions Environment).
This week’s blog was written by Bob Foster, and is the second installment in a two-part series. Bob is a member of the IBM Lab Services Power Systems Delivery Practice. He’s worked with PowerVM technologies for a number of years, and has focused on live partition mobility and simplified remote restart, including developing a Lab Services offering to assist clients with simplifying their use of LPM and SRR.
This blog post was edited to fix broken links on November 11, 2020.
This blog post was originally published on IBMSystemsMag.com and is reproduced here by permission of IBM Systems Media.