With the LPAR tool, all LPARs can be managed through easy-to-use commands. The LPAR tool can manage all LPARs and managed systems of multiple HMCs.
We have been using the LPAR tool for several years in our projects. It has been steadily developed during this time.
NEW: Version 1.4.0.1 includes a valid test license! The included license is valid until 31th october 2019. The test license supports 10 HMCs, up to 100 managed systems and up to 1000 LPARs.
So, if you want to test the LPAR tool, it is no longer necessary to request a trial license.
Informations for the LPAR tool: info@powercampus.de
AIX-Talk: LPAR tool
- Demonstration of the LPAR tool (german)
With the LPAR tool any number of HMCs, managed systems and LPARs can be conveniently administered from the command line. The LPAR tool allows you to create LPARs, map physical slots to an LPAR, create virtual adapters, and many more. The only prerequisite for using the LPAR tool is an SSH connection to the HMCs to be managed. The LPAR tool essentially consists of the 4 commands hmc, ms, lpar and vios. The following are some of the options of the LPAR tool.
First, an HMC to be managed must be registered with the LPAR tool. This is done with the command hmc:
$ hmc add hmc01 ms01 ms02 ..
All managed systems and LPARs connected to the specified HMC are registered. The registered HMCs can be shown by
$ hmc show HMC SERIAL MODEL hmc01 XXXXXXX 7042-CR6
The registered managed systems are shown using
$ ms show MS SERIAL MODEL HMCs ms01 XXXXXXX 8204-E8A hmc01 ms02 XXXXXXX 8204-E8A hmc01 ms03 XXXXXXX 8204-E8A hmc01 ...
And the registered LPARs are displayed with
$ lpar show LPAR ID SERIAL TYPE MS lpar01 5 XXXXXXXX aixlinux ms02 lpar02 99 XXXXXXXX aixlinux ms02 lpar03 27 XXXXXXXX aixlinux ms18 ...
If you want to know the firmware version, the memory configuration, the number of processors or the physical slots, this can be listed with the following commands:
Firmware version of two managed systems:
$ ms mcode ms01 ms02 MS PERMANENT TEMPORARY CURRENT ms01 01EL350_149 01EL350_163 01EL350_163 ms02 01EL350_149 01EL350_163 01EL350_163
Memory configuration of managed systems:
$ ms mem MS INSTALLED FIRMWARE CONFIGURABLE AVAILABLE ms01 786432 26880 786432 745216 ms02 32768 2176 32768 4992 ms03 262144 8448 262144 92928 ...
Processor configuration of managed systems:
$ ms proc MS INSTALLED CONFIGURABLE AVAILABLE ms01 48.0 48.0 45.5 ms02 4.0 4.0 1.2 ms03 8.0 8.0 3.35 ...
The physical slots of a managed systems can be shown using "ms slots":
$ ms slots ms09 SLOT DRCIDX LPAR DESCRIPTION U78C0.001.XXXXXXX-P2-T3 21010200 null RAID Controller U78C0.001.XXXXXXX-P2-C8-T7 21010201 null Generic XT-Compatible Serial Controller U78C0.001.XXXXXXX-P2-C4 21010202 null Empty slot U78C0.001.XXXXXXX-P2-C3 21010203 ms09-vio1 Quad 8 Gigabit Fibre Channel Adapter U78C0.001.XXXXXXX-P2-C2 21010204 ms09-vio1 Quad 8 Gigabit Fibre Channel Adapter U78C0.001.XXXXXXX-P2-C1 21010205 ms09-vio1 10 Gigabit Ethernet-SFP+ SR PCI-E adapter U78C0.001.XXXXXXX-P2-C9-T1 21010208 ms09-vio1 PCI-E SAS Controller U78C0.001.XXXXXXX-P2-C9-T2 21010209 ms09-vio1 PCI-E SAS Controller ...
If you are interested, you can simply output the command executed on the HMC command line without executing it. For example, for the slot assignment in the last example, just use the option -v (verbose only):
$ ms slots -v ms09 hmc01: lshwres -m ms09 -r io --rsubtype slot -F 'drc_name drc_index lpar_name description'
In each case the HMC and the command (s) that would be executed if you omit the option -v (verbose only) are displayed.
To illustrate further commands, the creation of an LPAR with a virtual Ethernet adapter and a virtual FC adapter will now be shown by way of example.
First, the LPAR is created with the command "lpar create". For this purpose, the option "-m <managed-system>" must be used to select the managed system on which the LPAR is to be created:
$ lpar -m ms09 create mylpar
Let's take a closer look at the newly created LPAR:
$ lpar disp mylpar MANAGED SYSTEM: ms09 NAME: mylpar ID: 7 SERIAL NUMBER: XXXXXXXX TYPE: aixlinux STATE: Not Activated OS: Unknown DEFAULT PROFILE: standard CURRENT PROFILE: (null) ...
The profile name was set to "standard". With option -p any other name can be chosen. You can of course also look at the profile, simply specify the profile to be displayed with the -p option:
$ lpar disp -p standard mylpar MANAGED SYSTEM: ms09 NAME: mylpar ID: 7 TYPE: aixlinux PROFILE: standard BOOT MODE: norm AUTOSTART: 0 MAX VIRTUAL SLOTS: 30 PROC COMPAT MODE: default PROC MODE: shared SHARING MODE: uncap UNCAP WEIGHT: 5 SHARED PROCPOOL: DefaultPool PROCS: min=1 desired=2 max=4 PROC UNITS: min=0.1 desired=0.2 max=4.0 MEMORY MODE: ded MEMORY EXPANSION: 0.0 MEMORY: min=1024 desired=4096 max=16384 HUGE PAGES: min=null desired=null max=null
The LPAR was thus created with 2 processor cores and an entitled capacity of 0.2, and 4 GB of memory.
We now create a virtual ethernet adapter with a port VLAN ID of 100:
$ lpar -p standard addeth mylpar 5 100
Since the LPAR is not active, the adapter can only be created in the profile!
We control the virtual adapters of the LPAR in the profile:
$ lpar -p standard vslots mylpar SLOT REQ TYPE DATA 0 yes serial 1 yes serial 5 no ethernet PVID=100 VLANS=(null) ETHERNET0
In addition to the virtual Ethernet adapter in slot 5, the two serial adapters that are created by default also appear here.
Now we need at least one storage adapter. We will create a virtual fiber channel adapter here. For this, we need the client adapter on the LPAR and a server adapter on a VIO server of the associated managed system. Let's first list the managed systems LPARs to find out which virtual I/O servers are available:
$ lpar -m ms09 show LPAR ID SERIAL TYPE MS lpar18 17 XXXXXXXX aixlinux ms09 lpar19 32 XXXXXXXX aixlinux ms09 mylpar 7 XXXXXXXX aixlinux ms09 ... ms09-vio1 1 XXXXXXXX vioserver ms09 ms09-vio2 2 XXXXXXXX vioserver ms09
So there are 2 virtual I/O servers on the managed system. Here we select the first virtual I/O server and try to find out which slot number is available for the server adapter:
$ lpar vslots ms09-vio1 SLOT REQ TYPE DATA 1 1 serial 0 1 serial 5 0 eth PVID=100 ETHERNET0 31 0 eth TRUNK(1) IEEE PVID=1 VLANS=100 ETHERNET0 32 0 eth TRUNK(1) IEEE PVID=2 VLANS=123,124 ETHERNET0 132 0 fc/server remote: lpar19(32)/10 117 0 fc/server remote: lpar18(17)/10 104 0 scsi/server remote: test01(4)/10 7 0 scsi/server remote: null(12)/11 53 0 scsi/server remote: lpar18(17)/11 6 0 scsi/server remote: test01(4)/11
The slot number 100 would still be available for the server adapter. On the client we choose the slot number 10. Now we can create client as well as server adapters:
On the client, the adapter is again entered only in the profile:
$ lpar -p standard addfc mylpar 10 ms09-vio1 100
On the server, the adapter is added both in the current profile and dynamically (assuming a working RMC connection):
$ lpar addfc ms09-vio1 100 mylpar 10
We briefly check the profile of the client to find the used WWPNs for the client adapter:
$ lpar -p standard vslots mylpar SLOT REQ TYPE DATA 0 yes serial 1 yes serial 5 no ethernet PVID=100 VLANS=(null) ETHERNET0 10 no fc/client remote: ms09-vio1(1)/100 c050760XXXXXXXXX,c050760XXXXXXXXX
On the VIO server, the virtual FC server adapter now has to be assigned to a physical FC port. We first look at the existing mappings:
$ vios npiv ms09-vio1 VIOS ADAPT NAME CLIENT OS ADAPT STATUS PORTS ms09-vio1 vfchost0 (7) unknown - NOT_LOGGED_IN 0 ms09-vio1 fcs4 vfchost4 (17) unknown - NOT_LOGGED_IN 0 ms09-vio1 fcs4 vfchost14 (32) unknown - NOT_LOGGED_IN 0
For our new LPAR (mylpar LPAR-ID 7), the device vfchost0 was created, but this is currently not mapped to any FC port. We will map it now:
$ vios vfcmap ms09-vio1 vfchost0 fcs4
If LUNs on the storage side have been mapped to the above WWPNs, then they should now be visible as soon as the LPAR is activated. The LPAR could then be installed.
We activate the LPAR first in the SMS menu:
$ lpar activate -p standard -b sms mylpar
Finally, we open a console to the currently activated LPAR to administer in the SMS menu:
$ lpar console mylpar Open in progress Open Completed. scan /vdevice/vfc-client@3000000a/tape IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM 1 = SMS Menu 5 = Default Boot List 8 = Open Firmware Prompt 6 = Stored Boot List Memory Keyboard Network SCSI Speaker PowerPC Firmware Version AM740_121 SMS 1.7 (c) Copyright IBM Corp. 2000,2008 All rights reserved. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Main Menu 1. Select Language 2. Setup Remote IPL (Initial Program Load) 3. Change SCSI Settings 4. Select Console 5. Select Boot Options ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Navigation Keys: X = eXit System Management Services ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Type menu item number and press Enter or select Navigation key:
This concludes our example.
The above example commands give a small overview of what is possible with the LPAR tool. A complete description is available with the LPAR tool.
Working with the LPAR tool is much easier and faster than using the HMC GUI. The LPAR tool can also be easily used in your own scripts for further automation. It is not necessary to change or select the "correct" HMC. By specifying the LPAR name, the associated managed system and the associated HMC are found out. In the case of redundant HMCs, the second HMC will be used automatically in the event of non-availability, without this having to be specified. If an HMC can not be reached, the second HMC is automatically used.
The LPAR tool can greatly simplify and speed up the administration of LPARs and managed systems
