I like Lego. Always have. We had a load of bricks when I was growing up and I built loads of robots, spaceships and other models. Now I have children of my own and I get to build Lego sets with them too. I built the Lego Millennium Falcon with my eldest, which took a […]
AIX tech tip: How to scan new devices with a single command
There are things I really love about virtualisation for Power Systems. I probably appreciate some things more than other people do because I got to see how things used to work many years ago. A combination of physical and virtual enhancements has made life a lot easier than it used to be. I remember when […]
Europeans like it bigger, newer and with more Linux
HelpSystems’ first IBM i Marketplace Survey reveals that Europeans run bigger boxes, use more AIX and Linux and are keener on VIOS than their North American counterparts. The survey was run in conjunction with our good friends at IT Jungle in the States and, in October, PowerWire got involved too. You can check out the […]
Five reasons to love your Hardware Management Console
For a while, I’ve noticed that most IBM i sites that have Hardware Management Consoles (HMCs) don’t seem to show them much love. In fact, in many cases I would go as far to say that they actively go out of their way to ignore them. If you have an HMC, ask yourself one question. […]
VIOS: How to create multiple virtual disks in a Shared Storage Pool
I recently installed a Power8 system with VIOS 2.2.3.4 and used this opportunity to configure a Shared Storage Pool (SSP) cluster. I needed to allocate around 34TB of storage space across 2 x IBM i LPARs which necessitated me creating 245 x 140GB virtual disks. While the simple option is to use the HMC GUI […]
Opinion: let IBM i have its day in the sun
Last week, IBM launched its new z13 mainframe (pictured above). Apparently, it had hurried the announcement along so that it came before its latest set of earnings. This move was rewarded by acres of virtual newsprint by the press. The oldest tech giant of them all is reportedly going through a painful transformation. The Big […]
Indian institution jumps to Oracle/Power combo
India’s Council of Agricultural Research has made the jump from paper-based processes to an Oracle-on-Power ERP system supporting well over 100 sites. The ambitious project is something of a coup for IBM’s Global Business Services division. Partly funded by the World Bank, it is one of the first national ERP implementations by central government in […]
HelpSystems buys Halcyon Software
America’s HelpSystems has bought British systems management specialist Halcyon Software for an undisclosed sum. In a press statement yesterday, HelpSystems, which is headquartered in Minneapolis and has its UK offices in Fleet, Hampshire, said that the acquisition would strengthen its range of solutions for managed services providers. The purchase also expands its cross-platform systems management/monitoring […]
Masterclass: how to monitor VIOS vSCSI disk performance
In my previous article I showed how you can use nmon in VIOS to display the performance statistics of hdisks that are mapped to client LPARs. This is achieved by creating a file which nmon reads and then displays the relevant performance data. Let’s look at a script I created to automatically generate the file […]
IBM & Nvidea team with top German HPC centre
As well as landing a mega deal from the U.S. government, IBM and Nvidia have teamed up with Germany’s Jülich Supercomputing Centre. Together, they plan to set up the POWER Acceleration and Design Centre to “advance the creation and optimisation of research applications on GPU-accelerated OpenPower-compatible systems”. The Centre will bring experts together from the […]