PowerVC

 View Only
Expand all | Collapse all

PowerVC - Brand New Installation and Setup

  • 1.  PowerVC - Brand New Installation and Setup

    Posted Mon October 02, 2023 10:48 PM

    Hello there.

    I am in a process of scoping a setup for PowerVC (Latest Version) and l am looking for some ideas/best practices. The main points are

    1. To deploy PowerVC in an existing environment which currently HMC managed
    2. Deploy PowerVC with HMC, no Nova!
    3. Number of managed systems (Hosts) Less then 10, from Power 10, 9 and 8s
    4. Number of VMs less then 100
    5. IBM Storage, mostly storwize
    6. Mix of SAN Fabrics (Cisco and Brocades)

    My main question: I would also like to understand the redundancy components of PowerVC, most documents cover a single instance of PowerVC with backup and restore. What's the best way of having it highly available?

    Warm Regards,

    --

    sc



    ------------------------------
    [Sasi] [Chand] [Mr]
    [Snr Engineer]
    [Auckland] [Wellington]
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: PowerVC - Brand New Installation and Setup

    Posted Tue October 03, 2023 02:38 AM

    Hi,

    PowerVC since version 2.0.2  release support for three-node architecture, the multi-node deployment provide HA solution.

    https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/powervc/2.1.1?topic=powervc-high-availability-scale-architecture

    This deployment provides a solution such that most of the services run in Active-Active mode that is monitored by Pacemaker.

    The PowerVC HA deployment is accessible through a virtual IP address (VIP) that internally routes the request to one of the three PowerVC management nodes.



    ------------------------------
    -----------------------------------
    Thierry Huché
    Power Systems Brand Technical Specialist
    IBM France
    -----------------------------------
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: PowerVC - Brand New Installation and Setup

    Posted Tue October 03, 2023 07:01 PM
    Edited by Sasi Chand Tue October 03, 2023 07:05 PM

    Thanks Thierry,

    Appreciate your feedback. 

    How does the licensing work with HA? E.g., PowerVC for Private Cloud if we were to deploy a 2 or 3 node solution, please?

    Regards,

    Sasi




  • 4.  RE: PowerVC - Brand New Installation and Setup

    Posted Wed October 04, 2023 04:23 AM

    Hi,

    To deploy PowerVC in a 3 nodes configuration, you need a High Availability Red Hat subscription.

    https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/powervc/2.1.1?topic=center-installing-power-virtualization-from-download

    Installing PowerVC

    1. Configure these repositories for RHEL.
      1. Yum repository for PowerVC install through RHN and make sure that the following repos are enabled.



    ------------------------------
    -----------------------------------
    Thierry Huché
    Power Systems Brand Technical Specialist
    IBM France
    -----------------------------------
    ------------------------------



  • 5.  RE: PowerVC - Brand New Installation and Setup

    Posted Sun November 12, 2023 05:24 PM

    Hi Thierry Huché,

    One question? What's the recommendation on hosting the PowerVC nodes on a PowerVM host? I am weighing up the options currently.

    Regards,

    Sasi



    ------------------------------
    [Sasi] [Chand] [Mr]
    [Snr Engineer]
    [Auckland] [Wellington]
    ------------------------------



  • 6.  RE: PowerVC - Brand New Installation and Setup

    Posted Wed November 29, 2023 10:42 AM

    Hi,

    I prefer to install PowerVC Server on a PowerVM host as I'm a Power guy and I prefer to manage it (if it was on Intel I will not). One another raison you would like to install PowerVC on a PowerVM host is if you want to export an image in ova format you need PowerVC or backup node installed on a PowerVM host that is attached with FC to the storage.

    Hope it help.



    ------------------------------
    -----------------------------------
    Thierry Huché
    Power Systems Brand Technical Specialist
    IBM France
    -----------------------------------
    ------------------------------



  • 7.  RE: PowerVC - Brand New Installation and Setup

    Posted Thu November 30, 2023 05:15 AM

    Having recently implemented PowerVC 2.1.1 on X86 VMs (VMWare), with some of what we've learned about it I would now preference putting it on Power.  We have discussed moving it over to Power as part of future evolution of our environment.



    ------------------------------
    Phill Rowbottom
    ------------------------------



  • 8.  RE: PowerVC - Brand New Installation and Setup

    Posted Tue December 05, 2023 05:31 PM

    Thanks for the feedback Phill

    Regards,

    Sasi



    ------------------------------
    [Sasi] [Chand] [Mr]
    [Snr Engineer]
    [Auckland] [Wellington]
    ------------------------------



  • 9.  RE: PowerVC - Brand New Installation and Setup

    Posted Tue October 03, 2023 10:35 AM

    Sasi,

    What I am about to say is hardly an official position of IBM on the PowerVC product. But...

     The HA architecture afforded by PowerVC v2.1+ is less about protection from unreliable HW and more about horizontal scaling. I don't recall ever having some type of "failure" on our x86 Linux servers (though it certainly could happen). You are far more likely to experience software defects and/or configuration issues. For modest sized environments like the one you describe, you could probably have adequate performance from a singleton cluster configuration.

    This is what we have elected to do. One thing you will have to be prepared for is how to manage upgrades to your environment. And in case you haven't figured it out yet, there's a LOT of moving parts to PowerVC/Openstack/certificates/firmware/etc.! So with the objective of "continuity of operations" in mind, we have two x86 servers on which PowerVC is installed and configured. One is the primary instance (with the latest backup performed daily) and the other is a secondary (or standby) instance (no backup is sensible). This allows us to have continuity of operations on the active instance while we are performing upgrades on the standby instance. Once the upgrades on the standby instance are complete and validated through testing, only then do we import the latest backup from the primary instance. The standby instance is now made the primary instance while the same upgrade steps are repeated on the standby (previously active) instance. Given that we have run into numerous cases wherein the upgrade operations have gone awry, this strategy has proven to repeatedly pay dividends by always having an operable instance of PowerVC for on-going provisioning work. Food for thought.



    ------------------------------
    Mackey Morgan
    ------------------------------



  • 10.  RE: PowerVC - Brand New Installation and Setup

    Posted Tue October 03, 2023 07:07 PM

    Hi Mackey,

    Thanks very much for sharing. Looks like a very good option.

    Regards

    Sasi



    ------------------------------
    [Sasi] [Chand] [Mr]
    [Snr Engineer]
    [Auckland] [Wellington]
    ------------------------------



  • 11.  RE: PowerVC - Brand New Installation and Setup

    IBM Champion
    Posted Mon October 16, 2023 10:44 AM

    I like reading the options available to maintain continuity of operations.



    ------------------------------
    Alan Fulton Follow me on Twitter - @The_Iron_Monger
    ------------------------------