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What's new in HMC V9 R2 M950

By HARIGANESH MURALIDHARAN posted Wed December 02, 2020 09:17 AM

  

HMC V9 R1 introduced support for managing POWER9 systems and has had multiple updates supporting scale-out, scale-up systems, different virtualization and systems management functions along with addressing many Request for Enhancements. V9 R2 M950 brings in a whole set of Systems Management, Virtualiazation , PowerVM Management functions with enablement for Cloud Management Console.

To get things started, with V9 R2 M950, there is a release level change from V9 R1 to V9 R2.

As mentioned in our previous blogs and communication through other channels, V9 R2 will not be supported on x86 Hardware appliance HMC’s while it will continue to support ppc64le Hardware appliance (7063-CR1) and x86 and ppc64le Virtual HMC appliance models. You can find useful information on upgrading from V9 R1 to V9 R2 Upgrading vHMC on x86 from V9 R1 to V9 R2 M950 and Upgrading Model 7063 HMC and vHMC on PowerVM from V9 R1 to V9 R2 M950

Virtualization & PowerVM Management:

  • Platform KeyStore enablement

    1. Platform keystore provides a secure space in NvRAM for OS to store information like encryption keys
    2. HMC allows user to configure keystore size per partition on capable systems
    3. Keystore size can be configured on partition creation or thereafter
    4. Keystore carries over on Live Partition Mobility (LPM)/ Remote Restart (RR)/ Disaster Recovery (DR)
    5. Needs non-default system level vTPM key for Inactive LPM/Remote Restart
  • Validate VIOS Maintenance Mode and VIOS Backup-restore:
    1. Introduces a new option in HMC to validate the readiness of the VIOS for Maintenance
      1. User needs to have all resource access
      2. Validation done for redundancy/failover setup for storage/network provided by VIOS (Virtual SCSI, Virtual FC, SRIOV vNIC , Shared Ethernet Adapters)
    2. Provides an option to initiate VIOS IO Config backup, save backup in HMC and restore at later point
    3. Provides an option to initiate VIOS full backup and save in HMC
    4. Ability to Manage VIOS backup files in HMC
    5. Useful links :
  • Multi-threaded support for Live Partition Mobility (LPM) performance improvement
    • Increases the maximum number of threads a single LPM operation can utilize from 4 to 8.
    • Automatically determine the desired number of threads to be used on each selected MSPs based on the memory size of the migrating partition if user did not specify MSP concurrent migration performance level setting
    • Allows user to use MSP query CLI command to view maximum number of threads per migration operation supported on each MSP (lslparmigr -r msp)
    • Allows user to use partition migration status query CLI command to view the actual thread count used on each involved MSP pair (lslparmigr -r lpar)
  • HMC UI Enhancements
    1. DLPAR of Virtual SCSI, Virtual FC adapters in VIOS/client partitions (RFE 119869)
    2. Reference code as part of Gallery view for partitions & systems (RFE 130949)
    3. Performance & Usability improvements 
  • Ability for user to query target side memory usage information for a migrating partition (lslparmigr -r mem) (RFE 118848)

Security Enhancements:

  • Removal of TLS 1.1 support
    • Legacy & NIST mode supported, but both with only TLS 1.2
  • Enhancements to chhmccert/ lshmccertfor adding & viewing trusted certificates
    • Useful for scenarios like HMC to CMC connection where the proxy server/firewall adds an intermediate certificate

Cloud Management Console (CMC) Enablement:

  • Enablement for dedicated processor partition support in Enterprise Pools 2.0

Important Notes:

  1. HMC V9 can manage POWER7, POWER8 & POWER9 systems but cannot be used to manage POWER6 systems.  

Contacting the PowerVM Team

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