RE: HMC - FSP Upgrade

["Chris Bipes" <chris.bipes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My new one in Chicago has full redundancy including mirrored drives.  I just had it installed yesterday.  I need to configure the second iSeries that existed and has the serial operations console to work with the HMC.

I know it is possible to have a HMC remote to an FSP but I have not set that up.

Next step is to upgrade the HMC here to 7.3xx so they match.  But I have to upgrade the FSP first.  We have that planned for the end of the month.  Moving forward, be it slowly.

Love to go the blades, we have a blade center here with 10 of 14 slots filled.  We do not have a SAN and the NAS we are running is very small and will not handle the I/O that our 3 tower Power 5 520 has with its 31 15K RPM drives across 3 controllers.

Chris Bipes
Director of Information Services
CrossCheck, Inc.

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Lukas Beeler
Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2010 10:31 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: HMC - FSP Upgrade

On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 18:56, Chris Bipes <chris.bipes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Does not have to be twinax. ÂLet's say your UPS blows a fuse and shuts down your iSeries and your HMC. The HMC cannot spin up it's Hard Drive. ÂYou need to get your iSeries up ASAP to support your business. ÂNow what do you do?

My HMC has redundant power supplies and is attached to two different,
completely independent UPS systems.

But realistically, if a HMC dies, i would use the second one. Our
second HMC is located in a datacenter, 130km away.

> (Yes you have IBM maintenance with 24x7 4hour onsite response for your HMC, right?)

Of course. But the hard drives in the -CR4 and -CR5 HMCs i've handled
so far are stock System x parts. We have most of them on-stock.

> Yes the HMC is independent of the HW it supports and it can support multiple systems. Â BUT the HMC still is dependent on the FSP. ÂIf you are a smaller shop with one iSeries, why do you want that second box to control it if you can web into the FSP and have your Console.

Nah. We're a small shop too, and we don't have 24x7 requirements. If
we had, we'd have redundant IBM i systems with fully redundant HMCs.

> ÂI love the HMC and have Two, one in Chicago and one in California.

Can each HMC control all the systems you have? If you haven't
configured that yet, now's a good time to do so.

> ÂI love the HMC but if it was to run inside of the iSeries when it is powered off, as the FSP currently does, why have the additional hardware? ÂEspecially since it is dependent on the FSP.

VIOS's IVM is basically what you're craving. Have you looked at
switching to blades?