I think the issue you ran into with the "Save configuration changes to profile" is the result of a very unfortunate bug that has been fixed in newer versions.

I say "unfortunate bug" because I wholeheartedly agree with your premise that profiles should be a thing of the past.  I even wrote a blog post about it in 2023 https://blog.vios4i.com/2023/01/please-stop-changing-partition-profiles.html

The modern HMC is entirely based in dynamic changes that do not work well with profiles.  If you find yourself changing a profile to do anything other than fix a problem that was created by changing a profile, you are doing it wrong.  The dynamic processes will automatically keep the VIOS and LPARs in sync, and they will generally do it without requiring a reboot.

Too many people want to do it the old way because it is what they know.  Sorry folks, dinosaurs are extinct because they could not adapt.  Don't be a dinosaur.

I run into issue caused by profile changes constantly.  They are usually very easy to avoid.  Use a single profile named "Default_profile", set the auto-sync option to Enabled, and do all your setup with the dynamic processes or the dynamic CLI commands and forget that profiles even exist.  That has worked for years until the one HMC release that defaulted to Disabled messed everything up.

You don't improve anything by changing the profile name to match the LPAR, so stop doing it.

As others in this thread have mentioned, the HMC gui seems to get changed with each release.  That IS annoying, but if you understand the principals, it really is not hard to figure out the steps you need to do.  

One recent HMC GUI change that really bothers me has also been recently mentioned in this thread is the *new* Carbon based partition profile GUI -- prominently highlighted with a "NEW" icon that will lead a whole new generation of engineers to the function that they ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT be using.  That option should be buried deep in the menus with the other maintenance functions, not right up front like it is now.

I think the issue you ran into with the "Save configuration changes to profile" is the result of a very unfortunate bug that has been fixed in newer versions.

I say "unfortunate bug" because I wholeheartedly agree with your premise that profiles should be a thing of the past.  I even wrote a blog post about it in 2023 https://blog.vios4i.com/2023/01/please-stop-changing-partition-profiles.html

The modern HMC is entirely based in dynamic changes that do not work well with profiles.  If you find yourself changing a profile to do anything other than fix a problem that was created by changing a profile, you are doing it wrong.  The dynamic processes will automatically keep the VIOS and LPARs in sync, and they will generally do it without requiring a reboot.

Too many people want to do it the old way because it is what they know.  Sorry folks, dinosaurs are extinct because they could not adapt.  Don't be a dinosaur.

I run into issue caused by profile changes constantly.  They are usually very easy to avoid.  Use a single profile named "Default_profile", set the auto-sync option to Enabled, and do all your setup with the dynamic processes or the dynamic CLI commands and forget that profiles even exist.  That has worked for years until the one HMC release that defaulted to Disabled messed everything up.

You don't improve anything by changing the profile name to match the LPAR, so stop doing it.

As others in this thread have mentioned, the HMC gui seems to get changed with each release.  That IS annoying, but if you understand the principals, it really is not hard to figure out the steps you need to do.  

One recent HMC GUI change that really bothers me has also been recently mentioned in this thread is the *new* Carbon based partition profile GUI -- prominently highlighted with a "NEW" icon that will lead a whole new generation of engineers to the function that they ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT be using.  That option should be buried deep in the menus with the other maintenance functions, not right up front like it is now.

I personally feel different partition profiles for an LPAR once made sense, in particular at the times you could do a lot of changes only by changing the profile and powering-off the LPAR and restarting it. And in some rare cases it might still be useful. All the dynamic changes that you can do nowadays, and synced between e.g. the Virtual I/O Server and the partition automatically, make manually modifying LPAR profiles a thing of the past.

Also, if I consider the number of times that I made a dynamic (or temporary) change to a partition profile that I DID NOT want to keep, I'd say that happens very infrequently. Almost all of the time, any change I made to a partition will need to end up in the partition profile permanently. So ONE profile for an LPAR, with the "Save configuration changes to profile option" set to Enable seems the most useful, logical choice for me.

I think most of the things you can do with the HMC GUI are also possible using the CLI, for those who prefer to script things, or repeat a setup etc. If there are tasks that can only be completed within the GUI (and not by a command or sequence of commands) IBM should fix this.

As someone else already mentioned: If you have an LPAR with Novalink to manage your system (co-managed by an HMC possibly) then the partition profiles on the HMC are no longer shown (or ignored) when the Novalink partitions gets control of the system for the first time. And with Novalink there is only one set of settings that is updated dynamically.   

I think the issue you ran into with the "Save configuration changes to profile" is the result of a very unfortunate bug that has been fixed in newer versions.

I say "unfortunate bug" because I wholeheartedly agree with your premise that profiles should be a thing of the past.  I even wrote a blog post about it in 2023 https://blog.vios4i.com/2023/01/please-stop-changing-partition-profiles.html

The modern HMC is entirely based in dynamic changes that do not work well with profiles.  If you find yourself changing a profile to do anything other than fix a problem that was created by changing a profile, you are doing it wrong.  The dynamic processes will automatically keep the VIOS and LPARs in sync, and they will generally do it without requiring a reboot.

Too many people want to do it the old way because it is what they know.  Sorry folks, dinosaurs are extinct because they could not adapt.  Don't be a dinosaur.

I run into issue caused by profile changes constantly.  They are usually very easy to avoid.  Use a single profile named "Default_profile", set the auto-sync option to Enabled, and do all your setup with the dynamic processes or the dynamic CLI commands and forget that profiles even exist.  That has worked for years until the one HMC release that defaulted to Disabled messed everything up.

You don't improve anything by changing the profile name to match the LPAR, so stop doing it.

As others in this thread have mentioned, the HMC gui seems to get changed with each release.  That IS annoying, but if you understand the principals, it really is not hard to figure out the steps you need to do.  

One recent HMC GUI change that really bothers me has also been recently mentioned in this thread is the *new* Carbon based partition profile GUI -- prominently highlighted with a "NEW" icon that will lead a whole new generation of engineers to the function that they ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT be using.  That option should be buried deep in the menus with the other maintenance functions, not right up front like it is now.

Perhaps I should have made myself more clear, so let me try again.

I am not against the very existence of the "sync chnages with profile". I believe i's an useful option and it should be there so that people may choose to use it if they see it's a good solution in their situation.

What I am against is making this setting more or less manadatory which - in its extreme interpretation - may lead to "only one profile, tantamount iwth runnng config, is what everybody needs" approach.

As for "profiles disappear when Novalink is used" situation, Novalink is an alternative model of managing Power environment and as such it may impose its own rules. I'm fine with it, nobody is forced to use Novalink, to each his own.

I personally feel different partition profiles for an LPAR once made sense, in particular at the times you could do a lot of changes only by changing the profile and powering-off the LPAR and restarting it. And in some rare cases it might still be useful. All the dynamic changes that you can do nowadays, and synced between e.g. the Virtual I/O Server and the partition automatically, make manually modifying LPAR profiles a thing of the past.

Also, if I consider the number of times that I made a dynamic (or temporary) change to a partition profile that I DID NOT want to keep, I'd say that happens very infrequently. Almost all of the time, any change I made to a partition will need to end up in the partition profile permanently. So ONE profile for an LPAR, with the "Save configuration changes to profile option" set to Enable seems the most useful, logical choice for me.

I think most of the things you can do with the HMC GUI are also possible using the CLI, for those who prefer to script things, or repeat a setup etc. If there are tasks that can only be completed within the GUI (and not by a command or sequence of commands) IBM should fix this.

As someone else already mentioned: If you have an LPAR with Novalink to manage your system (co-managed by an HMC possibly) then the partition profiles on the HMC are no longer shown (or ignored) when the Novalink partitions gets control of the system for the first time. And with Novalink there is only one set of settings that is updated dynamically.   

I think the issue you ran into with the "Save configuration changes to profile" is the result of a very unfortunate bug that has been fixed in newer versions.

I say "unfortunate bug" because I wholeheartedly agree with your premise that profiles should be a thing of the past.  I even wrote a blog post about it in 2023 https://blog.vios4i.com/2023/01/please-stop-changing-partition-profiles.html

The modern HMC is entirely based in dynamic changes that do not work well with profiles.  If you find yourself changing a profile to do anything other than fix a problem that was created by changing a profile, you are doing it wrong.  The dynamic processes will automatically keep the VIOS and LPARs in sync, and they will generally do it without requiring a reboot.

Too many people want to do it the old way because it is what they know.  Sorry folks, dinosaurs are extinct because they could not adapt.  Don't be a dinosaur.

I run into issue caused by profile changes constantly.  They are usually very easy to avoid.  Use a single profile named "Default_profile", set the auto-sync option to Enabled, and do all your setup with the dynamic processes or the dynamic CLI commands and forget that profiles even exist.  That has worked for years until the one HMC release that defaulted to Disabled messed everything up.

You don't improve anything by changing the profile name to match the LPAR, so stop doing it.

As others in this thread have mentioned, the HMC gui seems to get changed with each release.  That IS annoying, but if you understand the principals, it really is not hard to figure out the steps you need to do.  

One recent HMC GUI change that really bothers me has also been recently mentioned in this thread is the *new* Carbon based partition profile GUI -- prominently highlighted with a "NEW" icon that will lead a whole new generation of engineers to the function that they ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT be using.  That option should be buried deep in the menus with the other maintenance functions, not right up front like it is now.

I agree with Lech that profiles may be useful to some administrators and that HMC support for having multiple profiles should not be dropped, and "Save configuration changes to profile" should be a setting that remains (and can be changed by the HMC user).

That way people who want/need multiple profiles can continue to use that. And people who's environment is better suited by having 1 profile for an LPAR (and have dynamic changes copied to this profile automatically) can also do so.

Perhaps I should have made myself more clear, so let me try again.

I am not against the very existence of the "sync chnages with profile". I believe i's an useful option and it should be there so that people may choose to use it if they see it's a good solution in their situation.

What I am against is making this setting more or less manadatory which - in its extreme interpretation - may lead to "only one profile, tantamount iwth runnng config, is what everybody needs" approach.

As for "profiles disappear when Novalink is used" situation, Novalink is an alternative model of managing Power environment and as such it may impose its own rules. I'm fine with it, nobody is forced to use Novalink, to each his own.

I personally feel different partition profiles for an LPAR once made sense, in particular at the times you could do a lot of changes only by changing the profile and powering-off the LPAR and restarting it. And in some rare cases it might still be useful. All the dynamic changes that you can do nowadays, and synced between e.g. the Virtual I/O Server and the partition automatically, make manually modifying LPAR profiles a thing of the past.

Also, if I consider the number of times that I made a dynamic (or temporary) change to a partition profile that I DID NOT want to keep, I'd say that happens very infrequently. Almost all of the time, any change I made to a partition will need to end up in the partition profile permanently. So ONE profile for an LPAR, with the "Save configuration changes to profile option" set to Enable seems the most useful, logical choice for me.

I think most of the things you can do with the HMC GUI are also possible using the CLI, for those who prefer to script things, or repeat a setup etc. If there are tasks that can only be completed within the GUI (and not by a command or sequence of commands) IBM should fix this.

As someone else already mentioned: If you have an LPAR with Novalink to manage your system (co-managed by an HMC possibly) then the partition profiles on the HMC are no longer shown (or ignored) when the Novalink partitions gets control of the system for the first time. And with Novalink there is only one set of settings that is updated dynamically.   

I think the issue you ran into with the "Save configuration changes to profile" is the result of a very unfortunate bug that has been fixed in newer versions.

I say "unfortunate bug" because I wholeheartedly agree with your premise that profiles should be a thing of the past.  I even wrote a blog post about it in 2023 https://blog.vios4i.com/2023/01/please-stop-changing-partition-profiles.html

The modern HMC is entirely based in dynamic changes that do not work well with profiles.  If you find yourself changing a profile to do anything other than fix a problem that was created by changing a profile, you are doing it wrong.  The dynamic processes will automatically keep the VIOS and LPARs in sync, and they will generally do it without requiring a reboot.

Too many people want to do it the old way because it is what they know.  Sorry folks, dinosaurs are extinct because they could not adapt.  Don't be a dinosaur.

I run into issue caused by profile changes constantly.  They are usually very easy to avoid.  Use a single profile named "Default_profile", set the auto-sync option to Enabled, and do all your setup with the dynamic processes or the dynamic CLI commands and forget that profiles even exist.  That has worked for years until the one HMC release that defaulted to Disabled messed everything up.

You don't improve anything by changing the profile name to match the LPAR, so stop doing it.

As others in this thread have mentioned, the HMC gui seems to get changed with each release.  That IS annoying, but if you understand the principals, it really is not hard to figure out the steps you need to do.  

One recent HMC GUI change that really bothers me has also been recently mentioned in this thread is the *new* Carbon based partition profile GUI -- prominently highlighted with a "NEW" icon that will lead a whole new generation of engineers to the function that they ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT be using.  That option should be buried deep in the menus with the other maintenance functions, not right up front like it is now.

I think in general, that having just a single profile is much more manageable.  It also removes the possibility of someone starting up LPARs with an incorrect profile on a cold start of the frame, which can very easily increase outage time.  For myself, I can't really see much need for multiple profiles these days....in the past, before the introduction of autosync changes to the profile there was, but now....I'm failing to see it.

Phill.

I agree with Lech that profiles may be useful to some administrators and that HMC support for having multiple profiles should not be dropped, and "Save configuration changes to profile" should be a setting that remains (and can be changed by the HMC user).

That way people who want/need multiple profiles can continue to use that. And people who's environment is better suited by having 1 profile for an LPAR (and have dynamic changes copied to this profile automatically) can also do so.

Perhaps I should have made myself more clear, so let me try again.

I am not against the very existence of the "sync chnages with profile". I believe i's an useful option and it should be there so that people may choose to use it if they see it's a good solution in their situation.

What I am against is making this setting more or less manadatory which - in its extreme interpretation - may lead to "only one profile, tantamount iwth runnng config, is what everybody needs" approach.

As for "profiles disappear when Novalink is used" situation, Novalink is an alternative model of managing Power environment and as such it may impose its own rules. I'm fine with it, nobody is forced to use Novalink, to each his own.

I personally feel different partition profiles for an LPAR once made sense, in particular at the times you could do a lot of changes only by changing the profile and powering-off the LPAR and restarting it. And in some rare cases it might still be useful. All the dynamic changes that you can do nowadays, and synced between e.g. the Virtual I/O Server and the partition automatically, make manually modifying LPAR profiles a thing of the past.

Also, if I consider the number of times that I made a dynamic (or temporary) change to a partition profile that I DID NOT want to keep, I'd say that happens very infrequently. Almost all of the time, any change I made to a partition will need to end up in the partition profile permanently. So ONE profile for an LPAR, with the "Save configuration changes to profile option" set to Enable seems the most useful, logical choice for me.

I think most of the things you can do with the HMC GUI are also possible using the CLI, for those who prefer to script things, or repeat a setup etc. If there are tasks that can only be completed within the GUI (and not by a command or sequence of commands) IBM should fix this.

As someone else already mentioned: If you have an LPAR with Novalink to manage your system (co-managed by an HMC possibly) then the partition profiles on the HMC are no longer shown (or ignored) when the Novalink partitions gets control of the system for the first time. And with Novalink there is only one set of settings that is updated dynamically.   

I think the issue you ran into with the "Save configuration changes to profile" is the result of a very unfortunate bug that has been fixed in newer versions.

I say "unfortunate bug" because I wholeheartedly agree with your premise that profiles should be a thing of the past.  I even wrote a blog post about it in 2023 https://blog.vios4i.com/2023/01/please-stop-changing-partition-profiles.html

The modern HMC is entirely based in dynamic changes that do not work well with profiles.  If you find yourself changing a profile to do anything other than fix a problem that was created by changing a profile, you are doing it wrong.  The dynamic processes will automatically keep the VIOS and LPARs in sync, and they will generally do it without requiring a reboot.

Too many people want to do it the old way because it is what they know.  Sorry folks, dinosaurs are extinct because they could not adapt.  Don't be a dinosaur.

I run into issue caused by profile changes constantly.  They are usually very easy to avoid.  Use a single profile named "Default_profile", set the auto-sync option to Enabled, and do all your setup with the dynamic processes or the dynamic CLI commands and forget that profiles even exist.  That has worked for years until the one HMC release that defaulted to Disabled messed everything up.

You don't improve anything by changing the profile name to match the LPAR, so stop doing it.

As others in this thread have mentioned, the HMC gui seems to get changed with each release.  That IS annoying, but if you understand the principals, it really is not hard to figure out the steps you need to do.  

One recent HMC GUI change that really bothers me has also been recently mentioned in this thread is the *new* Carbon based partition profile GUI -- prominently highlighted with a "NEW" icon that will lead a whole new generation of engineers to the function that they ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT be using.  That option should be buried deep in the menus with the other maintenance functions, not right up front like it is now.

>  having just a single profile is much more manageable. It also removes the possibility of someone starting up LPARs with an incorrect profile on a cold start of the frame, which can very easily increase outage time

OTOH it opens the possibility of someone making a mistake when modifying the "one and only" profile (by modifying the running config which is synced with this profile) and then - having no idea what was the previous config (there should be just one profile so saving running config to another profile before making changes is not an option any more) - not being able to easily revert the change... 

I think in general, that having just a single profile is much more manageable.  It also removes the possibility of someone starting up LPARs with an incorrect profile on a cold start of the frame, which can very easily increase outage time.  For myself, I can't really see much need for multiple profiles these days....in the past, before the introduction of autosync changes to the profile there was, but now....I'm failing to see it.

Phill.

I agree with Lech that profiles may be useful to some administrators and that HMC support for having multiple profiles should not be dropped, and "Save configuration changes to profile" should be a setting that remains (and can be changed by the HMC user).

That way people who want/need multiple profiles can continue to use that. And people who's environment is better suited by having 1 profile for an LPAR (and have dynamic changes copied to this profile automatically) can also do so.

Perhaps I should have made myself more clear, so let me try again.

I am not against the very existence of the "sync chnages with profile". I believe i's an useful option and it should be there so that people may choose to use it if they see it's a good solution in their situation.

What I am against is making this setting more or less manadatory which - in its extreme interpretation - may lead to "only one profile, tantamount iwth runnng config, is what everybody needs" approach.

As for "profiles disappear when Novalink is used" situation, Novalink is an alternative model of managing Power environment and as such it may impose its own rules. I'm fine with it, nobody is forced to use Novalink, to each his own.

I personally feel different partition profiles for an LPAR once made sense, in particular at the times you could do a lot of changes only by changing the profile and powering-off the LPAR and restarting it. And in some rare cases it might still be useful. All the dynamic changes that you can do nowadays, and synced between e.g. the Virtual I/O Server and the partition automatically, make manually modifying LPAR profiles a thing of the past.

Also, if I consider the number of times that I made a dynamic (or temporary) change to a partition profile that I DID NOT want to keep, I'd say that happens very infrequently. Almost all of the time, any change I made to a partition will need to end up in the partition profile permanently. So ONE profile for an LPAR, with the "Save configuration changes to profile option" set to Enable seems the most useful, logical choice for me.

I think most of the things you can do with the HMC GUI are also possible using the CLI, for those who prefer to script things, or repeat a setup etc. If there are tasks that can only be completed within the GUI (and not by a command or sequence of commands) IBM should fix this.

As someone else already mentioned: If you have an LPAR with Novalink to manage your system (co-managed by an HMC possibly) then the partition profiles on the HMC are no longer shown (or ignored) when the Novalink partitions gets control of the system for the first time. And with Novalink there is only one set of settings that is updated dynamically.   

I think the issue you ran into with the "Save configuration changes to profile" is the result of a very unfortunate bug that has been fixed in newer versions.

I say "unfortunate bug" because I wholeheartedly agree with your premise that profiles should be a thing of the past.  I even wrote a blog post about it in 2023 https://blog.vios4i.com/2023/01/please-stop-changing-partition-profiles.html

The modern HMC is entirely based in dynamic changes that do not work well with profiles.  If you find yourself changing a profile to do anything other than fix a problem that was created by changing a profile, you are doing it wrong.  The dynamic processes will automatically keep the VIOS and LPARs in sync, and they will generally do it without requiring a reboot.

Too many people want to do it the old way because it is what they know.  Sorry folks, dinosaurs are extinct because they could not adapt.  Don't be a dinosaur.

I run into issue caused by profile changes constantly.  They are usually very easy to avoid.  Use a single profile named "Default_profile", set the auto-sync option to Enabled, and do all your setup with the dynamic processes or the dynamic CLI commands and forget that profiles even exist.  That has worked for years until the one HMC release that defaulted to Disabled messed everything up.

You don't improve anything by changing the profile name to match the LPAR, so stop doing it.

As others in this thread have mentioned, the HMC gui seems to get changed with each release.  That IS annoying, but if you understand the principals, it really is not hard to figure out the steps you need to do.  

One recent HMC GUI change that really bothers me has also been recently mentioned in this thread is the *new* Carbon based partition profile GUI -- prominently highlighted with a "NEW" icon that will lead a whole new generation of engineers to the function that they ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT be using.  That option should be buried deep in the menus with the other maintenance functions, not right up front like it is now.

I think the issue you ran into with the "Save configuration changes to profile" is the result of a very unfortunate bug that has been fixed in newer versions.

I say "unfortunate bug" because I wholeheartedly agree with your premise that profiles should be a thing of the past.  I even wrote a blog post about it in 2023 https://blog.vios4i.com/2023/01/please-stop-changing-partition-profiles.html

The modern HMC is entirely based in dynamic changes that do not work well with profiles.  If you find yourself changing a profile to do anything other than fix a problem that was created by changing a profile, you are doing it wrong.  The dynamic processes will automatically keep the VIOS and LPARs in sync, and they will generally do it without requiring a reboot.

Too many people want to do it the old way because it is what they know.  Sorry folks, dinosaurs are extinct because they could not adapt.  Don't be a dinosaur.

I run into issue caused by profile changes constantly.  They are usually very easy to avoid.  Use a single profile named "Default_profile", set the auto-sync option to Enabled, and do all your setup with the dynamic processes or the dynamic CLI commands and forget that profiles even exist.  That has worked for years until the one HMC release that defaulted to Disabled messed everything up.

You don't improve anything by changing the profile name to match the LPAR, so stop doing it.

As others in this thread have mentioned, the HMC gui seems to get changed with each release.  That IS annoying, but if you understand the principals, it really is not hard to figure out the steps you need to do.  

One recent HMC GUI change that really bothers me has also been recently mentioned in this thread is the *new* Carbon based partition profile GUI -- prominently highlighted with a "NEW" icon that will lead a whole new generation of engineers to the function that they ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT be using.  That option should be buried deep in the menus with the other maintenance functions, not right up front like it is now.

I think the issue you ran into with the "Save configuration changes to profile" is the result of a very unfortunate bug that has been fixed in newer versions.

I say "unfortunate bug" because I wholeheartedly agree with your premise that profiles should be a thing of the past.  I even wrote a blog post about it in 2023 https://blog.vios4i.com/2023/01/please-stop-changing-partition-profiles.html

The modern HMC is entirely based in dynamic changes that do not work well with profiles.  If you find yourself changing a profile to do anything other than fix a problem that was created by changing a profile, you are doing it wrong.  The dynamic processes will automatically keep the VIOS and LPARs in sync, and they will generally do it without requiring a reboot.

Too many people want to do it the old way because it is what they know.  Sorry folks, dinosaurs are extinct because they could not adapt.  Don't be a dinosaur.

I run into issue caused by profile changes constantly.  They are usually very easy to avoid.  Use a single profile named "Default_profile", set the auto-sync option to Enabled, and do all your setup with the dynamic processes or the dynamic CLI commands and forget that profiles even exist.  That has worked for years until the one HMC release that defaulted to Disabled messed everything up.

You don't improve anything by changing the profile name to match the LPAR, so stop doing it.

As others in this thread have mentioned, the HMC gui seems to get changed with each release.  That IS annoying, but if you understand the principals, it really is not hard to figure out the steps you need to do.  

One recent HMC GUI change that really bothers me has also been recently mentioned in this thread is the *new* Carbon based partition profile GUI -- prominently highlighted with a "NEW" icon that will lead a whole new generation of engineers to the function that they ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT be using.  That option should be buried deep in the menus with the other maintenance functions, not right up front like it is now.

The problems that I've seen people made because they do things on the CLI where this isn't the sanity checking that the GUI has have been interesting.  Freezing the hypervisor to the point that the only option was to pull the cables out of the back (wasn't me but at a company I worked for).  Really using the GUI is the much safer option, it doesn't allow you to make the errors that the CLI does.  The CLI certainly isn't the safer option.

I think the issue you ran into with the "Save configuration changes to profile" is the result of a very unfortunate bug that has been fixed in newer versions.

I say "unfortunate bug" because I wholeheartedly agree with your premise that profiles should be a thing of the past.  I even wrote a blog post about it in 2023 https://blog.vios4i.com/2023/01/please-stop-changing-partition-profiles.html

The modern HMC is entirely based in dynamic changes that do not work well with profiles.  If you find yourself changing a profile to do anything other than fix a problem that was created by changing a profile, you are doing it wrong.  The dynamic processes will automatically keep the VIOS and LPARs in sync, and they will generally do it without requiring a reboot.

Too many people want to do it the old way because it is what they know.  Sorry folks, dinosaurs are extinct because they could not adapt.  Don't be a dinosaur.

I run into issue caused by profile changes constantly.  They are usually very easy to avoid.  Use a single profile named "Default_profile", set the auto-sync option to Enabled, and do all your setup with the dynamic processes or the dynamic CLI commands and forget that profiles even exist.  That has worked for years until the one HMC release that defaulted to Disabled messed everything up.

You don't improve anything by changing the profile name to match the LPAR, so stop doing it.

As others in this thread have mentioned, the HMC gui seems to get changed with each release.  That IS annoying, but if you understand the principals, it really is not hard to figure out the steps you need to do.  

One recent HMC GUI change that really bothers me has also been recently mentioned in this thread is the *new* Carbon based partition profile GUI -- prominently highlighted with a "NEW" icon that will lead a whole new generation of engineers to the function that they ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT be using.  That option should be buried deep in the menus with the other maintenance functions, not right up front like it is now.