4.3. Activating an LPAR

If an LPAR is powered off (Status Not Activated), the LPAR can be activated with the command “lpar activate“. If an LPAR is activated for the first time after it has been created, the “-p” option and a profile name must be specified:

$ lpar -p standard activate aix04
$

The LPAR is then activated and an attempt is made to boot the operating system.

Most of the configuration of an LPAR is stored in profiles. An LPAR can have several profiles if required, but it can only use one of its profiles at a time. A profile of an LPAR is always permanently assigned to the LPAR and cannot be used for another LPAR. If two LPARs have profiles with the name “myprofile“, then these are 2 different profiles, even if the name is the same. Each of the two profiles is clearly assigned to exactly one of the LPARs and can only be used by this LPAR. Which profiles have been created for an LPAR can be displayed with the command “lpar lsprof” (list profiles):

$ lpar lsprof aix04
NAME                      MEM_MODE  MEM   PROC_MODE  PROCS  PROC_COMPAT
last*valid*configuration  ded       33792  shared     4      default
ostandard                 ded       16384  shared     2      default
standard                  ded       33792  shared     4      default
$

The last*valid*configuration profile is managed by PowerVM. This profile always contains the current configuration (if the LPAR is currently active) or the last active configuration (if the LPAR is not activated). The existence of this special profile indicates that the LPAR is either active or has already been active. The LPAR can then be activated without specifying a profile; the configuration of the last*valid*configuration profile is then used. For a newly created LPAR, the last*valid*configuration profile does not exist before the first activation.