Re: LPAR IBM pSeries 650
From: Kurt Telep (gurft_at_mac.com)
Date: 02/26/04
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Date: 26 Feb 2004 07:21:52 -0800
Dan Foster <dsf@globalcrossing.net> wrote in message news:<slrnc3qc6p.mkp.dsf@gaia.roc2.gblx.net>...
> In article <43bf69f7.0402251521.28242e9d@posting.google.com>, Vikram Sharma <sharma_vick@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > I have a specific question regarding partitioning a Mid Range pSeries
> > 650 Server.
> > Below is the hardware specification:
> > --------------------------------------
> > Rack Server pSeries 650: 1 Qty
> > 36.4 GB 10,000 RPM Ultra320 SCSI Disk Drive Assembly: 2 Qty
> > 146.8 GB 10,000 RPM Ultra320 SCSI Disk Drive Assembly: 2 Qty
> > 2-Way 1.2 GHz POWER4+ Processor Card: 4 Qty
> > 4096MB (4*1024MB) SDRAM DIMM Memory: 4 Qty
> >
> > Wondering how many LPAR's I can do with the given configuration,
> > reason I am asking is because one of our Sys. Admin's told us that we
> > can only do 2 Partitions, because the pair of each disk drives are
> > mirrored together.
>
> You could ask him to not mirror the drives, but instead, allocate one drive
> to each LPAR. I *think* the setup you describe would permit for 4 LPAR
> partitions, maximum.
>
> The p650 only has 4 internal hot-swappable SCSI drive bays... however, for
> much more money, you can order a RIO drawer which supports up to 12 drive
> bays per drawer with max of 8 RIO drawers (8x12 = 96 expansion disks max
> plus 4 internal drives for total of 100 disks possible with the p650). This
> is necessary only if your system administrator feels that mirroring is an
> hard and non-negotiable requirement.
>
> It would ordinarily not be a good idea to have unmirrored boot drives, but
> it is easily possible. I would suggest having each partition backed up if
> they are unmirrored to prevent loss of work if a drive ever fails.
>
> -Dan
Your Sysadmin is correct, with the given configuration, it looks to me
like you can only have 1 or 2 partitions, based on whether or not the
split-backplane feature code has been ordered from IBM
I'm assuming from your post that you have all 4 disks loaded into the
internal SCSI drive bays. If you look in the p650 Technical guide,
there are two configuration option for the internal drive bays, a
single and split back-plane. With the split backplane, a second SCSI
adapter is added and the internal drive bays are split across both
adapters, allowing you to have two individual partitions, each with
two disks. Remember, in an LPAR environment you can only assign an
entire adapter to a given partition, not individual disks.
If you need to run a 4 LPAR environment, you again have a few options.
Dan above mentions a D20 I/O drawer. This has 2 6-disk drive bays on
the front that can be separated and have 6 or 8 I/O slots on the back
(I'd have to walk into the machine room to check)
If you don't need the adapter slots, you can simply add SCSI adapters
in a D10 drawer and then attach any number of 2104 Disk arrays which
total up to a cheaper package.
I cannot stress how important it is to mirror your rootvg devices if
you cannot afford downtime. Even restore from local tape can take
hours dependent on the size of your system image. With mirrored
disks, there's just an item in the error report and an email from the
Service Agent.
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