In this section we take a closer look at the available managed systems. In addition to the status of the managed systems, we are also interested in the features of the managed systems and the installed firmware.

The ms command is used for everything related to managed systems. A series of subcommands of ms can be used to determine which information should be displayed or which operations should be carried out on managed systems. The ms command currently supports more than 70 subcommands!

First, let’s display all managed systems. To do this, start the command “ms show“:

$ ms show
NAME  SERIAL_NUM  TYPE_MODEL  HMCS   MODEL_NAME
ms01  326F12X     8284-22A    hmc01  IBM Power System S822
ms02  326F13X     8284-22A    hmc01  IBM Power System S822
ms03  32D4E3X     8286-41A    hmc01  IBM Power System S814
ms04  32D4E4X     8286-41A    hmc01  IBM Power System S814
$

In addition to the name, the serial number, type, HMCs and model name are displayed. If you do not want all managed systems to be displayed, you can specify one or more managed systems as an argument.

Try it and specify the names of 2 managed systems as an argument:

$ ms show ms01 ms03
NAME  SERIAL_NUM  TYPE_MODEL  HMCS   MODEL_NAME
ms01  326F12X     8284-22A    hmc01  IBM Power System S822
ms03  32D4E3X     8286-41A    hmc01  IBM Power System S814
$

The LPAR tool generally allows you to specify a serial number or a type (or type model) instead of a name. This means that you can specify a serial number or type instead of a managed system name in all commands.

Specify your first and last managed system using the serial number:

$ ms show 326F12X 32D4E4X
NAME  SERIAL_NUM  TYPE_MODEL  HMCS   MODEL_NAME
ms01  326F12X     8284-22A    hmc01  IBM Power System S822
ms04  32D4E4X     8286-41A    hmc01  IBM Power System S814
$

If you specify a type (or type model), this can of course match more than one managed system. All managed systems of the corresponding type will then be displayed. Enter the type of the first managed system as an argument (in our case 8284-22A for S822):

$ ms show 8284-22A
NAME  SERIAL_NUM  TYPE_MODEL  HMCS   MODEL_NAME
ms01  326F12X     8284-22A    hmc01  IBM Power System S822
ms02  326F13X     8284-22A    hmc01  IBM Power System S822
$

All managed systems of the corresponding type are displayed.

There is another way to specify managed systems, and that is the use of wildcards. The LPAR tool supports the use of wildcards known from the shell. It tries to apply the specified wildcard to the name, serial number and type. The wildcard “*84*“, for example, matches the type model number 8284-22A in our case:

$ ms show '*84*'
NAME  SERIAL_NUM  TYPE_MODEL  HMCS   MODEL_NAME
ms01  326F12X     8284-22A    hmc01  IBM Power System S822
ms02  326F13X     8284-22A    hmc01  IBM Power System S822
$

Note: To prevent the wildcard from being interpreted by the shell, we have placed it in apostrophes.

Next, we display the number of processor cores of the managed systems. The command “ms lsproc” is available for this. As with “ms show“, it can either be started without arguments and then shows all known managed systems, or you can specify the managed systems of interest. Names, serial numbers, type and wildcards can also be used here.

Have the processor configuration of all your managed systems listed:

$ ms lsproc
NAME  INSTALLED  CONFIGURABLE  AVAIL  MAX_SHARED_PROC_POOLS
ms01  20.0       20.0          6.8    64
ms02  20.0       20.0          7.2    64
ms03  6.0        6.0           2.0    64
ms04  6.0        6.0           2.0    64
$

Similarly, the memory configuration can also be displayed using the command “ms lsmem”. Display the memory configuration of all managed systems whose type is e.g. 8284-22A (S822):

$ ms lsmem 8284-22A
NAME  INSTALLED  FIRMWARE   CONFIGURABLE  AVAIL      MEM_REGION_SIZE
ms01  512.00 GB   10.00 GB  512.00 GB      96.00 GB  256.00 MB
ms02  512.00 GB    9.75 GB  512.00 GB      88.25 GB  256.00 MB
$

You can see that these are rather small systems, and there is not much memory available (AVAIL column).

Next, we check the status of the managed systems. The ms command offers the status subcommand for this. Display the status of all your managed systems:

$ ms status
NAME  STATE      DETAILS  IPADDR          SECONDARY  KEYLOCK  SERVICE_LPAR_ID
ms01  Operating  None     192.168.188.7   -          norm     none
ms02  Operating  None     192.168.188.12  -          norm     none
ms03  Operating  None     192.168.188.5   -          norm     none
ms04  Operating  None     192.168.188.3   -          norm     none
$

As you can see from the output, all of our managed systems are in the Operating state. The IP address of the service processor, as well as the keylock position and the ID of the service LPAR are also displayed.

A command that takes a little longer is the command “ms lslic”, which can be used to display information about the installed system firmware. Display the system firmware of two of your managed systems:

$ ms lslic ms01 ms02
NAME  LIC_TYPE        CONTROL  ECNUMBER  INSTALLED  ACTIVATED  ACCEPTED  DEFERRED  IPL  UAK
ms01  Managed System  HMC      01SV860   215        215        165       None      215  05/23/2022
ms02  Managed System  HMC      01SV860   215        215        165       None      215  06/25/2022
$

The active firmware version in the example is 01SV860_215 (ECNUMBER and ACTIVATED columns). The last column (UAK) contains the date until which the update access key is valid.

As a final example, we would like to look at the PCI slots of the systems. The command for this is “ms lsslot”. However, the attempt to start the command without an argument fails:

$ ms lsslot
ERROR: a managed system is expected as argument
USAGE:
   ms [-h ] lsslot [-o ] [{-f|-j|-y}] [-F ] [-s ] [-v]  
$

With this command (and some others), a managed system must be specified. Only the slots for one managed system can be displayed at a time.

Select one of your managed systems and enter it as an argument to view the slot allocation:

$ ms lsslot ms01
DRC_NAME                  DRC_INDEX  IOPOOL  LPAR_NAME  DESCRIPTION
U78CB.001.VYR0AI3-P1-C7   21010010   none    ms01-vio2  PCIe2 16Gb 2-Port Fibre Channel Adapter
U78CB.001.VYR0AI3-P1-C11  21010013   none    ms01-vio1  PCIe2 4-Port (10GbE SFP+ & 1GbE RJ45) Adapter
U78CB.001.VYR0AI3-P1-C12  21020014   none    ms01-vio2  PCIe2 4-Port (10GbE SFP+ & 1GbE RJ45) Adapter
U78CB.001.VYR0AI3-P1-C14  21030015   none    ms01-vio2  PCIe3 x8 SAS RAID Internal Adapter 6Gb
U78CB.001.VYR0AI3-P1-C6   21010018   none    ms01-vio2  Quad 8 Gigabit Fibre Channel LP Adapter
U78CB.001.VYR0AI3-P1-T2   2101001B   none    -                  Universal Serial Bus UHC Spec
U78CB.001.VYR0AI3-P1-C9   2103001D   none    ms01-vio2  PCIe2 4-Port (10GbE SFP+ & 1GbE RJ45) Adapter
U78CB.001.VYR0AI3-P1-C10  2104001E   none    -                  PCIe2 4-port (10Gb FCoE & 1GbE) LR&RJ45 Adapter
U78CB.001.VYR0AI3-P1-C15  2105001F   none    ms01-vio1  PCIe3 x8 SAS RAID Internal Adapter 6Gb
U78CB.001.VYR0AI3-P1-C5   21010021   none    ms01-vio1  Quad 8 Gigabit Fibre Channel LP Adapter
U78CB.001.VYR0AI3-P1-C2   21010028   none    ms01-vio1  PCIe2 4-Port (10GbE SFP+ & 1GbE RJ45) Adapter
U78CB.001.VYR0AI3-P1-C3   21010029   none    ms01-vio1  PCIe2 16Gb 2-Port Fibre Channel Adapter
$

All PCI slots are listed. In addition to the physical location code (DRC_NAME column), the LPAR to which the slot is currently assigned is also indicated. The last column contains a description of the installed card.

The commands shown are of course only a small selection of the available functions. You can get an overview of everything the ms command offers by starting the command without any arguments:

$ ms
USAGE:
   ms [ ...]  [ ...] [ ...]   ms -L|-V

Recognized keywords:
   acceptlic - Accept currently activated LIC updates
   activatelic - Disruptively activate LIC updates
   actsriov - Activate SR-IOV adapter firmware updates
…
$