Hi all,

since we updated our virtual HMCs to v10R2 SP 1040, we noticed that our old AIX 5.3 (5300-12-09-1341) LPARs (that we must keep online for legal reasons) running on POWER8 (8286-42A / S824) are seen in seen in HMC with RMC connection status as "None". The main impact is that we can no longer perform LPM operations for these LPARs. We have applied without success the "Fixing the No RMC Connection Error" method described here Fixing the No RMC Connection Error. Does anyone have any idea of what's causing the problem ? Thanks in advance.

Hi Sylvain,

My first thought would be to double-check & rule out any possible version / compatibility conflicts within the entire environment. Could be as simple as a limitation between the old AIX version and the new HMC version. 

Thanks,

Chris.  

Hi Sylvain,

I am not sure but I'd say that you need newer version of RSCT for AIX 5.3 (which of course is not available).

But if you must have the systems online because of legal reasons, your legal department should have budget for the custom development of RSCT for AIX 5.3 and for AIX 5.3 support. Otherwise I'd suggest to drop the ethernet connection to the system. If they must be online, it doesn't mean someone must use them. It is a huge security risk to have such old systems connected to the network (even HMC network).

You could still do offline/inactive LPM, that doesn't require an RMC connection.

Shutdown

Migrate

Startup

Hi Sylvain,

Unfortunately there are no good, that is to say low risk, choices left.

Depending what software you are running, there is a very good chance that the software running on AIX 5.3 will work on AIX 7.3, even if hasn't been certified etc.

All the OpenSSL and OpenSSH  versions that run on AIX 5.3 are full of known vulnerabilities, same applies to AIX.

I looked at my notes regarding RMC connections and there was change in RSCT on some AIX 6.1 version regarding RMC classes.

On AIX 5.3 and earlier there was only single RMC class that contained HMC IP address, named IBM.ManagementServer, and you can find HMC name and or IP address using this command

lsrsrc IBM.ManagementServer Name

On AIX 6.1 and newer there is a new RSCT class named IBM.MCP, and the HMC connection can be found using this command.

lsrsrc IBM.MCP HMCIPAddr

I suspect that the "IBM.ManagementServer" was removed on some AIX 6.1 version.

IMHO that is most likely the reason why your LPARs RSCT cannot communicate with the HMC.

If you have to keep the LPAR running, I'd suggest that you should shutdown the LPAR, take a snapshot of the all disks and upgrade the OS to a newer version and see how the software behaves.

Should the powers that be balk at the upgrade then I'd suggest this as a new method of accessing the date on the LPAR:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-oVuQpjG3s