LPAR-Tool: Which LPARs have no RMC-Connection

Status and configuration of LPARs are regularly needed information in the administration of LPARs. With the LPAR tool, information such as status, RMC status, number of cores, size of RAM, OS version and other data can be easily and quickly determined, even with hundreds or thousands of LPARs. Which LPARs don’t have an RMC connection is shown as one of the examples.

All of the following examples were performed on an environment with 10 HMCs, 50 managed systems, and just over 500 LPARs. To determine how long the LPAR tool requires, the run times of the commands were measured and specified using time.

The names of the LPARs were manually changed in the outputs shown and replaced by generic names lparXX and aixYY.

First of all, the status of a single LPAR:

$ time lpar status aix01
NAME   LPAR_ID  LPAR_ENV   STATE     PROFILE    SYNC  RMC       PROCS  PROC_UNITS  MEM     OS_VERSION
aix01  27       aixlinux   Running   standard   0     active    1      0.1         8192    AIX 7.1 7100-04-02-1614

real    0m0.210s
user    0m0.011s
sys     0m0.013s
$

Of course you can also specify multiple LPARs. If you want to know the status of all LPARs (in our case just over 500 LPARs), just leave out the argument:

$ time lpar status
NAME    LPAR_ID  LPAR_ENV   STATE     PROFILE      SYNC  RMC       PROCS  PROC_UNITS  MEM     OS_VERSION
aix01   27       aixlinux   Running   standard     0     active    1      0.1         8192    AIX 7.1 7100-04-02-1614
aix02   1        aixlinux   Running   standard     -     -         1      -           8320    Unknown
...
lpar01  6        aixlinux   Running   standard     0     active    1      0.4         20480   AIX 7.1 7100-04-05-1720

real	0m18.933s
user	0m3.819s
sys	0m3.789s
$

In the background, the LPAR tool executes more than 150 commands on the corresponding HMCs (lshwres and lssyscfg)!

The output should now be restricted to LPARs that are currently active (state=Running). There is the option “-s“, which can be used to specify criteria for attributes that must be met. Only LPARs meeting these criteria will be shown:

$ time lpar status -s state=Running
NAME     LPAR_ID  LPAR_ENV   STATE    PROFILE    SYNC  RMC       PROCS  PROC_UNITS  MEM     OS_VERSION
aix01    27       aixlinux   Running  standard   0     active    1      0.1         8192    AIX 7.1 7100-04-02-1614
aix02    1        aixlinux   Running  standard   -     -         1      -           8320    Unknown
...
lpar01   6        aixlinux   Running  standard   0     active    1      0.4         20480   AIX 7.1 7100-04-05-1720

real	0m17.998s
user	0m3.692s
sys	0m3.647s
$

Now we want to know on which of these LPARs RMC is not working/not active. The option “-s” allows to combine any number of criteria. All specified criteria must then be met (logical AND). The RMC state can be found in the attribute rmc_state:

$ time lpar status -s state=Running,rmc_state!=active
NAME     LPAR_ID  LPAR_ENV   STATE    PROFILE    SYNC  RMC       PROCS  PROC_UNITS  MEM     OS_VERSION
aix02    1        aixlinux   Running  standard   -     -         1      -           8320    Unknown
aix03    2        aixlinux   Running  standard   -     -         1      -           8320    Unknown
...
lpar07   4        aixlinux   Running  standard   0     none      1      1.0         4352    Unknown

real	0m19.057s
user	0m3.550s
sys	0m3.512s
$

As another example we want to know on which LPARs AIX 7.1 TL5 is installed. The os_version attribute contains the OS version. The ‘~‘ operator can be used to compare against a regular expression (similar to the grep command). We use the regular expression 7100-05:

$ time lpar status -s os_version~7100-05
NAME     LPAR_ID  LPAR_ENV  STATE    PROFILE    SYNC  RMC       PROCS  PROC_UNITS  MEM     OS_VERSION
aix14    14       aixlinux  Running  standard   0     active    2      0.2         16384   AIX 7.1 7100-05-02-1810
aix16    24       aixlinux  Running  standard   0     active    2      0.2         16384   AIX 7.1 7100-05-03-1846
...
lpar10   10       aixlinux  Running  standard   0     active    3      0.3         32768   AIX 7.1 7100-05-02-1810

real	0m18.212s
user	0m3.726s
sys	0m3.676s
$

So far, we have always used the default output format. Now we’d like to list all systems that still run on AIX 6.1, but this time only the LPAR name and the OS version will be output. For this there is the option “-F“, with which the desired output fields can be specified:

$ time lpar status -s os_version~6100 -F name:os_version
aix39:AIX 6.1 6100-07-04-1216
aix46:AIX 6.1 6100-07-04-1216
...
lpar35:AIX 6.1 6100-09-05-1524

real	0m18.041s
user	0m3.619s
sys	0m3.699s
$

If you prefer JSON output, you can easily do that with the option “-j“, here’s the same example with JSON output:

$ time lpar status -s os_version~6100 -F name:os_version -j
{
	"name": "aix39",
	"os_version": "AIX 6.1 6100-07-04-1216"
}
{
	"name": "aix46",
	"os_version": "AIX 6.1 6100-07-04-1216"
}
...
{
	"name": "lpar35",
	"os_version": "AIX 6.1 6100-09-05-1524"
}

real	0m21.247s
user	0m3.670s
sys	0m3.720s
$

Of course you can not know all attribute names by heart! But that’s not necessary, because you can easily see all attribute names. Use the option “-f” (stanza format) and specify any LPAR:

$ lpar status -f lpar19
lpar19:
	curr_lpar_proc_compat_mode = POWER7
	curr_mem = 8192
	curr_proc_mode = shared
	curr_proc_units = 0.3
	curr_procs = 2
	name = lpar19
	os_version = AIX 6.1 6100-09-05-1524
...
$

With the options “-h” and “-m” the LPARs can be selected depending on the associated HMC and/or managed system.

Status of all LPARs with associated HMC hmc01:

$ lpar -h hmc01 status

Status of all LPARs whose corresponding HMC has type 7042-CR6:

$ lpar -h 7042-CR6 status

Status of all LPARs whose associated HMC has type 7042-CR6 and whose name begins with lpar:

$ lpar -h 7042-CR6 status lpar*

Status of all LPARs on the managed system ms13:

$ lpar -m ms13 status

Status of all LPARs whose managed system is an S922:

$ lpar -m 9009-22A status

The presented selection and output options apply to all output commands of the LPAR tool (except the vios command).

The LPAR-Tool can be downloaded from our download area: https://powercampus.de/en/download-2

The LPAR-Tool contains a test license which is valid until the end of october.

LPAR-Tool in Action: Examples

The LPAR tool can administer HMCs, managed systems, LPARs and virtual-I/O-servers via the command line. The current version of the LPAR tool (currently 1.4.0.2) can be downloaded from our download page https://powercampus.de/download. A trial license, valid until October 31, is included. This article will show you some simple but useful applications of the LPAR tool.

A common question in larger environments (multiple HMCs, many managed systems) is: where is a particular LPAR? This question can easily be answered with the LPAR tool, by using the command “lpar show“:

$ lpar show lpar02
NAME    ID  SERIAL     LPAR_ENV  MS    HMCS
lpar02  39  123456789  aixlinux  ms21  hmc01,hmc02
$

In addition to the name, the LPAR-ID and the serial number, the managed system, here ms21, and the associated HMCs, here hmc01 and hmc02, are also shown. You can also specify multiple LPARs and/or wildcards:

$ lpar show lpar02 lpar01
...
$ lpar show lpar*
...
$

If no argument is given, all LPARs are listed.

 

Another question that frequently arises is the status of an LPAR or multiple LPARs. Again, this can be easily answered, this time with the command “lpar status“:

$ lpar status lpar02
NAME    LPAR_ID  LPAR_ENV  STATE    PROFILE   SYNC  RMC     PROCS  PROC_UNITS  MEM   OS_VERSION
lpar02  39       aixlinux  Running  standard  0     active  1      0.7         7168  AIX 7.2 7200-03-02-1846
$

The LPAR lpar02 is Running, the profile used is standard, the RMC connection is active and the LPAR is running AIX 7.2 (TL3 SP2). The LPAR has 1 processor core, with 0.7 processing units and 7 GB RAM. The column SYNC indicates whether the current configuration is synchronized with the profile (attribute sync_curr_profile).

Of course, several LPARs or even all LPARs can be specified here.

If you want to see what the LPAR tool does in the background: for most commands you can specify the option “-v” for verbose-only. The HMC commands will then be listed, but no changes will be made to the HMC. Here are the HMC commands that are issued for the status output:

$ lpar status -v lpar02
hmc01: lssyscfg -r lpar -m ms21
hmc01: lshwres -r mem -m ms21 --level lpar
hmc01: lshwres -r proc -m ms21 --level lpar
$

 

Next, the addition of additional RAM will be shown. We start with the status of the LPAR:

$ lpar status lpar02
NAME    LPAR_ID  LPAR_ENV  STATE    PROFILE   SYNC  RMC     PROCS  PROC_UNITS  MEM   OS_VERSION
lpar02  39       aixlinux  Running  standard  0     active  1      0.7         7168  AIX 7.2 7200-03-02-1846
$

The LPAR is running and RMC is active, so a DLPAR operation should be possible. We will first check if the maximum memory size is already in use:

$ lpar lsmem lpar02
            MEMORY         MEMORY         HUGE_PAGES 
LPAR_NAME  MODE  AME  MIN   CURR  MAX   MIN  CURR  MAX
lpar02     ded   0.0  2048  7168  8192  0    0     0
$

Currently the LPAR uses 7 GB and a maximum of 8 GB are possible. Extending the memory by 1 GB (1024 MB) should be possible. We add the memory by using the command “lpar addmem“:

$ lpar addmem lpar02 1024
$

We check the success by starting the command “lpar lsmem” again:

$ lpar lsmem lpar02
           MEMORY         MEMORY         HUGE_PAGES 
LPAR_NAME  MODE  AME  MIN   CURR  MAX   MIN  CURR  MAX
lpar02     ded   0.0  2048  8192  8192  0    0     0
$

(By the way: if the current configuration is not synchronized with the current profile, attribute sync_curr_profile, then the LPAR tool also updates the profile!)

 

Virtual adapters can be listed using “lpar lsvslot“:

$ lpar lsvslot lpar02
SLOT  REQ  ADAPTER_TYPE   STATE  DATA
0     Yes  serial/server  1      remote: (any)/any connect_status=unavailable hmc=1
1     Yes  serial/server  1      remote: (any)/any connect_status=unavailable hmc=1
2     No   eth            1      PVID=123 VLANS= ETHERNET0 XXXXXXXXXXXX
6     No   vnic           -      PVID=1234 VLANS=none XXXXXXXXXXXX failover sriov/ms21-vio1/1/3/0/2700c003/2.0/2.0/20/100.0/100.0,sriov/ms21-vio2/2/1/0/27004004/2.0/2.0/10/100.0/100.0
10    No   fc/client      1      remote: ms21-vio1(1)/47 c050760XXXXX0016,c050760XXXXX0017
20    No   fc/client      1      remote: ms21-vio2(2)/25 c050760XXXXX0018,c050760XXXXX0019
21    No   scsi/client    1      remote: ms21-vio2(2)/20
$

The example shows virtual FC and SCSI adapters as well as a vNIC adapter in slot 6.

 

Finally, we’ll show how to start a console for an LPAR:

$ lpar console lpar02

Open in progress 

 Open Completed.

…

AIX Version 7

Copyright IBM Corporation, 1982, 2018.

Console login:

…

The console can be terminated with “~.“.

 

Of course, the LPAR tool can do much more.

To be continued.