Re: LPAR question - primary partition ??

["Charles Wilt" <charles.wilt@xxxxxxxxx>]

John,

Only the older boxes needed a "primary" partition, think of it as a
place to host the configuration of the other partitions.  IBM
recommend that the primary partition be a small one that was not used
for any other work, ie. production or development.  So if you wanted
for instance a Production LPAR, a QA LPAR, and a Development LPAR,
you'd end up setting up 4 partitions of of which would be the
"primary".

With the newer boxes POWER5/POWER6, the HMC controls the configuration
of the partitions.  No primary needed.

In addition, with the POWER6 you can "host" or guest an IBM i OS
partition from another IBM i OS partition.  The benefit to doing so is
that with a regular LPAR, you have to have at least a dedicated disk
controller + DASD.  On a hosted partition, the Controller + DASD is
virtualized from the guesting partition.

HTH,
Charles

On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 10:55 AM, McKown, John
<John.Mckown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Again, I'm coming from a "z" environment. We've had LPAR for a very long
> time. One very confusing, to me, difference is that on the "i", you have
> a "primary partition" which must run the "i" system software. What is
> this partition doing? There is no such thing on the "z". Or perhaps it
> might be more accurate to say that the "primary partition" equivalent
> (PR/SM) runs from what is called the HSA (Hardware Storage Area) which
> is memory taken "off the top" and which contains the PR/SM (LPAR)
> software along with a lot of hardware defination control blocks.
>
> John McKown
>
> Systems Engineer IV
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