Re: Guide to Configure/Deploy New Power9 Box and LPARs using vHMC

Hi Jacob

I see you mentioned that the separate LPARs will be hosting clients as
well; I think the biggest challenge you have here if you do i on i hosting
(as it looks like you might have to) is that all your clients will be
essentially running in the same pool of disk on the hosting LPAR unless you
go down the road of separate ASPs. What this means in practise is that you
can't easily separate disk activity in the hosting pool so each client LPAR
might have issues related to a "noisy neighbour".

On the plus side as you have all SSD's and maybe the app is yours, this is
probably manageable and you will brute force your way past it. In my
experience disk contention causing performance issues is easily the biggest
headache in a large i on i hosted environment, but as your disks are all
the same and SSDs to boot this might not be an issue. You don't really get
any QOS options with NWSDs so tuning is pretty crude. Not sure if adding
memory to the NWSDs will help but that could get expensive financially and
in terms of resource.

Paul made some good points about organizing storage spaces and NWSDs; I
would add that having a separate NWSD for Optical and Tape is also useful -
it's been recommended before so the archives should help if you need more
detail.

Not sure what your business plan looks like, but if it was me I would be
looking to get onto a power box with VIOS, SAN storage and (maybe) FC VTLs
for backup -if you don't already have them. It will be a lot more
scaleable, functional and manageable than just an i. Nothing against the i
(I've spent pretty much forty years on it and its predecessor) but it's an
application/processing box, not a box designed for hosting multiple tenants
so while it can do it in a limited fashion, it's not its main game. I don't
necessarily think starting with i on i hosting is a bad thing if that's
your comfort level and a lot of the concepts are usable as you scale up but
I would not stick with it for the long run.

It's not too late to go back to your BP to get them to help you optimize
what you have and start thinking about the future, so I would involve them
(or someone else) if that's an option as you will want them with you in th
elonger journey anyway.

On Fri, Mar 5, 2021 at 3:26 AM Jacob Banda <jnbanda@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rob,

I absolutely see where you (and everybody else) are coming from, and I
understand fully what you mean. I had no ill-intentions when bringing up
this question, but thank you for the honest reply!

Take care everyone!

-----------------------------------------
Jacob Banda
-----------------------------------------



-----Original Message-----
date: Thu, 4 Mar 2021 12:54:06 +0000
from: Rob Berendt <rob@xxxxxxxxx>
subject: RE: Guide to Configure/Deploy New Power9 Box and LPARs using
vHMC

Ok, I made this a separate reply.
If you are hosting client lpars for actual paying clients you are over your
head.
You failed to communicate effectively with the BP who sold you this system.
You probably should have paid a little extra for consulting hours on
getting
this set up. Heck our BP gave us a few hours with our sale and we used
that
for just this stuff. We actually have a few credit hours from IBM we used
for DB2 performance tracking and other stuff and a little more for maybe
taking another look at DB2 Web Query.
There are some good people on this list who have not yet replied and it may
well be that they look at you as a competitor as they host sites. That and
rule 0fh at https://www.frankeni.com/FrankenRules.html#12h Oh, and one of
them is at a data center today doing work, and some of that is being paid
for by my employer.

Rob Berendt
--
IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM i 6.1
Group Dekko
Dept 1600
Mail to: 7310 Innovation Blvd, Suite 104
Ft. Wayne, IN 46818
Ship to: 7310 Innovation Blvd, Dock 9C
Ft. Wayne, IN 46818
http://www.dekko.com


-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of
Jacob
Banda
Sent: Thursday, March 4, 2021 2:09 AM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Guide to Configure/Deploy New Power9 Box and LPARs using vHMC

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Evan/Paul,

Thank you for your responses so far. Good content.

Evan, thank you for the input on consuming i licenses when going down the
path of i hosting i. Good to know.

I see also that the disk is all internal, so it probably comes down to

what
has been ordered as to which is actually viable.
The disks that were ordered for this box are ESJBs, and in my reading today
I found out that these disks, although identical to ESJAs, are identified
by
IBM as disks used by IBM i.

https://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ssi/rep_sm/5/89
7/ENUS9009-_h05/index.html&request_locale=enwww-01.ibm.com
<https://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ssi/rep_sm/5/897/ENUS9009-_h05/index.html&request_locale=enwww-01.ibm.com>

When this box was ordered it was primarily meant to be used for hosting
customer LPARs spread across different versions of i, as well as in-house
development partitions of i. Linux on Power was more of an afterthought (we
currently have Linux only on x86 hardware). So now I'm wondering if I can
even get VIOS up on this box, or if I will have to go down the route of i
hosting i/Linux. We still plan on using it for the original purpose, but I
was hoping to get some extra bang out of the hardware by adding Linux
LPARs.

Am I missing something here? Can I still host Linux LPARs with ESJB disks?

-----------------------------------------
Jacob Banda
-----------------------------------------

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