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What's new in HMC V8 R860

By HARIGANESH MURALIDHARAN posted Sun June 07, 2020 08:49 AM

  

PowerVM Version 2.2.5 is a major upgrade that includes many new enhancements which are listed here.  As with any PowerVM release, there are many enhancements to the HMC. This blog provides an overview of new functions in HMC V8 R8.6.0.

PowerVM

Dynamic Toggle of Simplified Remote Restart (SRR)

Starting with V8 R8.6.0, HMC supports toggling the SRR capability when the partition is active.

To know whether the system supports the dynamic toggle, use lssyscfg –r sys –Fdynamic_simplified_remote_restart_toggle_capable or use the REST API to view the Managed System Capability.

To disable/enable the capability, use the Enhanced UI/CLI/Rest API:

CLI:

chsyscfg –r lpar –m <sys name> -i "name=<lpar_name>,simplified_remote_restart_capable=0|1"

Enhanced UI:

SRR Toggle GUI

                    

Platform Enablement for Disaster Recovery

HMCV8 R8.6.0 provides enablement for the restarting a partition in a Disaster Recovery Environment. Disaster Recovery will be orchestrated by the Geographically Dispersed Resiliency (GDR) for Power Solution whose official announcement letter is at : GDR for Power

SRIOV vNIC Failover

Enhancement to support for the vNIC Failover feature which provides redundancy options for the client without having to configure multiple vNIC client adapters. Each vNIC Client adapter can be backed by multiple logical ports and if the active backing device fails, another backing device is selected automatically to serve the client. Please see Blog on vNIC Failover & Adding a new vNIC for more details.

Performance & Capacity Monitoring Enhancements

  1. Export of Performance Monitoring data in CSV format is available through the REST API or the GUI. The data thus exported can be used directly by third party data analytics tools like Splunk.
  2. Shared Storage Pool (SSP) performance metrics are available through the REST APIs.
  3. HMC also supports Energy Monitoring starting with the 8.6.0 release & the Energy metrics are available through the REST APIs on supported systems. User has the option to enable/disable energy monitoring via the REST APIs.

IBM i Native IO Capability

HMC now has support to show whether the system supports IBM i Partitions with native IO on systems running firmware 860 & also enforces the Restricted IO setting on IBM i partitions when the system doesn’t support IBM i native IO capability. Refer to Verify System Native IO Capability & Creating a IBM i Partition for more details.

Live Partition Mobility (LPM) Enhancements

HMC support for LPM enhancements outlined in the LPM improvements in PowerVM 2.2.5 blog.

Remote Restart

rrstartlpar command has been enhanced to to allow virtual SCSI mappings and virtual NIC mappings to be specified while validating for remote restart/remote restarting partitions.

PCIe Topology

With PowerVM 2.2.5, HMC adds the Enhancement to the PCIe Hardware Topology to show the Cable Attributes of PCIe Link. 

HMC Management, UI, Performance

Enhanced UI Improvements

  1. You can now view the history of tasks initiated via Enhanced UI. The new task logging function is supported for tasks initiated by user via Enhanced UI, with details of the task initiated, success/failure of the task, initiator of the task, task duration among others. Logged in user can do a quick view of the task log in the right side dock-pad.
  2. Topology Diagrams now feature click cards which provide additional information about a selected resource.  To view more detailed information, you can right-click a resource and additional information is displayed.
  3.  Create Partition – You have a new option which enables creation of an AIX/Linux/IBM i partition with minimum resources - 0.1 processing units & 1 GB Memory. You can launch the Manage Partition view to assign network/storage resources & adjust the processor/memory setting before activating/powering on the partition. By default, the create partition option in Enhanced UI takes you to the new panel, however you have the choice to select the option of ‘Create using Template’, if you wish to create the partition using partition templates.

Performance

As with previous HMC releases, we strive to improve the performance of the HMC in general & specifically have focused on the Enhanced UI performance in this release. We have made performance improvements to the Virtual Network, Virtual Storage & Templates functions on the HMC.

HMC Management

  • You can now configure your SNMP server to listen to new SNMP traps on the HMC as an indication of system state or health.
  • vHMC Activation Engine adds support for DHCP server configuration
  • You can now disable/enable IPv6 on HMC using the chhmc command (chhmc –c network –s enable/disable --ipv6)                                                   

Important Notes

  • Please note that HMC V8 R8.6.0 will be the last release to,
    • Support Power 6 systems
    • Allow Classic UI Login
    • Support CR5, CR6 and C08 models
  • HMC V8 R8.6.0 also supports managing the new E850C systems
  • This release discontinues the support for CIM Interfaces. REST API is the recommended programmatic interface and documentation is available at REST API Documentation
  • The following browser versions are now supported
    • Google Chrome Version 48
    • Safari Version 9.1.1 (11601.6.17).
    • Internet Explorer 11.0.
    • Mozilla Firefox Version 38 Extended Support Release (ESR) and Mozilla Firefox Version 45 Extended Support Release (ESR).

Contacting the PowerVM Team

Have questions for the PowerVM team or want to learn more?  Follow our discussion group on LinkedIn IBM PowerVM or IBM Community Discussions

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