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What's new in HMC V8 R870

By HARIGANESH MURALIDHARAN posted Mon June 08, 2020 07:21 AM

  

HMC V8 R8.7.0 is a major release that introduces support for HMC running on the the Power Platform and enables previously missing UI functions via the Enhanced UI. Here’s a quick overview of what’s new in HMC V8 R8.7.0.

HMC on Power:

HMC V8 R8.7.0 introduces support for HMC on Power appliance and Virtual HMC (vHMC) running on Power. The new HMC on Power appliance model is 7063-CR1 and vHMC can be installed as a partition on PowerVM systems. The functions supported by HMC on Power is the same as the current HMC models running on x86 platform, i.e., you should not see any difference in managing your systems or any difference in other solutions like PowerVC, LKU (Live Kernel Update), GDR (Geographically Dispersed Resiliency), etc., or interacting with the HMC. With HMC on POWER, you can have your complete infrastructure running on POWER including the System Management products.

Setup and Installing HMC on 7063-CR1 appliance:

You can find the setup and cabling instructions for the appliance here

The 7063-CR1 appliance uses a BMC based service processor and provides remote management capability. You can find the instructions to managing the BMC using IPMI or BMC GUI here

You can find the procedure for installing HMC on the 7063-CR1 appliance here.

HMC Software appliance, a.k.a vHMC for PowerVM:

You can download the vHMC for PowerVM from the Entitled Systems Support (ESS) site with product id 5765-HMA. You will find the install instructions here

Some important notes on the vHMC on PowerVM :

  1. vHMC on PowerVM doesn’t provide graphics adapter support for adapters assigned to the partition. You can enable remote access and use a supported browser for accessing the UI

  2. DLPAR operations such as processor/memory add/remove for HMCs running as a LPAR are not supported, i.e., you can’t dynamically modify the resources allocated to the LPAR hosting the HMC itself, but the HMC can perform all DLPAR actions on the systems it is managing.

  3. You can use inactive partition migration or Simplified Remote Restart to move the LPAR hosting the vHMC, if required.

  4. vHMC for PowerVM requires a POWER 8 server with Little Endian support and system firmware 860 is recommended.

  5. vHMC running on Power cannot manage the system it is hosted on.

Enhanced UI Enhancements:

HMC V8 R8.7.0 supports only the Enhanced UI. All the functions available via the Classic login are now available in the Enhanced UI. While this may be a big change for many of you (we did mention about the classic login going away when HMC V8 R8.6.0 was released), there is lot of material available in the form of Blogs or How-to-Videos to help you out with using the new UI.

 

 

In general, co-managing the system with different levels of HMC’s is not recommended. However you can co-manage the system with 8.6.0 & 8.7.0, so that you can have an easy transition to the Enhanced UI. Another option for new users would be to use V8.7.0 in dev/test environments until they are comfortable and then update the production environments.

IBM I IO Hosting (Storage):

The GUI and REST API have been enhanced to create and manage IBM i hosted virtual SCSI adapters for partitions. You can view and manage IBM i hosted virtual SCSI adapters from the Partition Virtual Storage Adapter View. Support for configuring IBM i hosting network for IBM i will be added in 870 SP1.

Performance & Capacity Monitoring:

The PCM dashboard has a new section for showing SR-IOV physical and logical port counters. You can:

  • Retrieve and show SR-IOV port counter information from a server on demand

  • Refresh the port counter statistics

  • Reset the statistics

Virtual Storage:

Partition Virtual Storage adapter view has been enhanced to support adding storage from the adapter view. Also, WWPN login and logout functions have been added to the Partition Virtual Storage Virtual Fibre Channel page.

Other Enhancements:

  • Frame support and System Plan support has been added to the Enhanced UI.

  • You can now re-order columns in table in the dashboard views.

  • Template deploy has been enhanced to include detailed information about the detailed progress updates

  • System IP address has been added to the system General Settings page

  • Resource configuration state has been added to the partition General Properties page.

  • Maximum virtual adapters has been added to the Virtual I/O Server General Properties page.

  • The Migrate Logical Unit operation has been enhanced to run in the background since it can take a long time to complete.  This will allow the GUI to be used for other operations. You can view the status of the operation in the task log.

You can read about general fixes and known issues in the HMC README

We are always looking for feedback on the Enhanced UI. You can post your questions on IBM Community Discussions or the IBM PowerVM LinkedIn group.

Performance:

As with previous HMC releases, we strive to improve the performance of the HMC in general & specifically focusing on the Enhanced UI and this release is no different. We have made performance improvements to the Virtual NIC, Virtual Storage & Topology Diagrams functions on the HMC.

HMC Management:

  • You can now save the upgrade data to a remote site using FTP or Secure FTP (SFTP) and restore the saved upgrade data from remote site after upgrading the HMC. The Save Upgrade Data task has been enhanced to support FTP and secure FTP (SFTP). saveupgdata and rstupgdata commands now support FTP & Secure FTP (SFTP). (RFE 90342)
  • A new command, formatmedia, has been added to format a USB device (RFE 86277)
  • The Format Media task has been enhanced to show USB device details such as product and vendor information.
  • The chhmc and lshmc commands have been enhanced to configure and display BMC settings on Power-based HMCs.
    • The lsmediadev command has been enhanced to display the product, vendor, and label information for USB devices

As you may see, some of the enhancements are driven from RFE (Request For Enhancement) requests. We encourage you to submit RFE’s for any enhancement requests or vote for the ideas that you would like to see in the product which will help in our prioritization. To submit an RFE for HMC, please go to https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rfe/execute?use_case=submitRfe and specify the product as Power Hardware Management Console.

Important Notes:

  • Please note that HMC V8 R8.7.0 will be the last release to support POWER 6 systems
  • HMC V8 R8.7.0 doesn’t support CR5, CR6, C08 models
  • HMC V8 R8.7.0 doesn’t support Classic UI Login
  • The following browser versions are now supported
    • Google Chrome Version 60
    • Safari Version 10.1
    • Internet Explorer 11.0.
    • Mozilla Firefox Version 45 Extended Support Release (ESR) and Mozilla Firefox Version 52 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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