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 […]
New Power models set to “disrupt” competition
Sometimes you’ve just got to admire Big Blue’s chutzpah. Last Wednesday, the corporation announced that it had pretty much wrapped up the sale of its x86 server manufacturing division to Chinese giant Lenovo. Two days later, it made its latest Power Systems announcements with a press release entitled: “IBM provides clients superior alternative to x86-based […]
Masterclass: Creating an Etherchannel adapter for resiliency with VIO Server
An important aspect of VIO Server design is high availability and resiliency for your client LPARs. However reliable the equipment is, failures do occur and there is always human error. Etherchannel or LACP allows you to provide enhanced network availability and throughput for your LPARs by bundling a number of VIOS Ethernet NICs together to […]
Events diary: Something for everyone at Inforum plus full listings
ERP giant Infor’s European conference schedule gets underway in November with plenty on the agenda for Power i people. Inforum 2014 hits Frankfurt from November 4-5, Paris from November 6-7, London from November 11-12 and Amsterdam from November 14-15. Infor has around 19,000 customers around the world that are running one of its many IBM […]
IBM’s AIX made the most money from Unix in Q2
IBM made the most cash from Unix servers in this year’s second quarter but Oracle sold the most machines. That’s according to an erudite analysis of the latest figures from Gartner by Timothy Prickett Morgan on EnterpriseTech. Prickett Morgan’s reading of the Gartner ‘s latest worldwide quarterly server stats has Oracle down as shipping 11,108 […]