IBM
IBM p5 CPU Swap and LPAR Setup
IBM p5 CPU Swap and LPAR Setup
#IBM #CPU #Swap #LPAR #Setup
“clabretro”
Swapping out one of the processor assemblies on an IBM p5 550Q power machine from the mid-2000s. After that we’ll setup …
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Those sip modules are neat but cursed. had some with swapped VGA RGB
Those RS6000's aren't servers… they're black holes in a beige box. I don't think I've ever dealt with a heavier machine in my life… I'm convinced that having datacenters full of these is what sank New Orleans to below sea level… '
Mmm, I have a pair of P6 520 (Express)s, a p505, and a 710. The queue of old computers needing my attention is just too deep. I don't think they've been on in 5 years :-(. I should dig out the vios software and get AIX 7 going one of these days. I really wish I could move LPARs from one host to another, but that's another enablement my 520s don't have.
HMCs before the virtual appliances were the x86(-64) servers, but the product number of the x3550 M3, M4, M5 was replaced with the product number for the HMC option in the BIOS/UEFI firmware. You can change it with some utility that's used to set the serial number when you replace motherboards I think. I did that to one x3550 M3 or M4 then stumbled on a M5 mis-advertised as just a x3550 M5…for far less than the factory HMCs were going for on ebay at the time. I think there might be a version of the HMC that supports POWER5 and POWER6. I don't know if there's one that will do POWER5, POWER6, and POWER7 so I probably can't run a single HMC if I want to see my p505.
The 710 is a cute entry to POWER7, but of course I wish it was a 730. POWER7 is interesting in having 4-way (4 threads per core) SMT (Simultaneous Multithreading, or HyperThreading in Intel speak).
I had fun operating a P6 550 Express, two P6 520 Expresses later replaced by a 710, 720, and 750 running some ERP type software.
I think I pieced together my two P6 520s from at least three ebay buys-the sellers were terrible at shipping. I should have left the P6 520 we decommissioned from the data center in the my car a little longer, I ended up leaving that job what seems like days after I unloaded the gear from the DC, would have saved me finding powervm enablement p6 520 on my own and dealing with bad shippers.
The previous setup used VIOS to virtualize the hardware. You could build a VIOS partition and assign all the hardware resources to it, no?
41:20 Is that an RA1000 in the corner under the DL380? I remember there being a stellar easter egg on the midplane silk screen.
We just shut one of these down yesterday as we migrated our financial system onto RedHat instead. Good systems but time to go
5 months in the making! (since last p5 video) the LPAR monster has been slayed finally lol glad to see it going! it really looks like you need a HMC to fully experience these. OK, now run Linux on a LPAR; lol I would be trying it. There is linux distros that support IBM POWER…got to try it lol.
Almost thought my Friday night was ruined! He is back.
Heck yeah! Looking forward to seeing you at VCFMW!
Oh hey, fellow Colorado resident! I knew there was a reason I liked this channel. 🏔
"it's probably really painful to watch me clunk through this" don't worry, I'm clunking through learning node.js, express, and typescript at the same time, way more painful.
Good job on the 240VAC service. Look at an L14-30R or L6-20R and some 240V PDUs. You can run all your wide input range gear on 240V for a few more percent of PSU efficiency.
My first job at a fertilizer manufacturing plant 2005-2013, had a F40 as our DR server and the p5 as our live. I don’t think we had any LPAR it if we did only 1 and no HMC
We were running QAD MFGpro as our ERP.
Good memories.
RIP any reasonable power bill
Very cool! You have inspired me to be more exprloratory with my system. I was just using Ubuntu and running docker programs on my dell t430 then remoting in only using CasaOS. Now i have ProxMox running only a couple LXC containers with my different apps. I have eveything reverse proxied so i can access my machine anywhere, And the machine is using like 30 watts less power. Super fun!
I love seeing these silly machines that are entirely incomprehensible to me on my feed. definitely watching to the end.
I love your IBM hardware videos! As a current user/'admin' of a Power 914 server running IBMi with a vHMC, I'm always keen to try to learn more about the IBM ecosystem as there's not much learning material out there, especially here in the UK. This is my third IBM server, the previous being a P720 and before that, a P515.
FYI you can use the same storage controller and SCSI controller, just during installation of os you select the hdd to install and the virtual io allows to give inputs to guests host from physical host
another option would be to ssh into the HMC, from which you should be able to connect to any configured LPAR. unsurprising that there is a command-line interface within the HMC for everything you can do from the web gui.
Sun disks in an IBM server?! I'm sure there is a law against this blasphemy..
The ActionRetro of IT.
Very nice and pretty IBM gear, I'm envious
Finally. 🎉 I can stop naging about it.
I worked at ibm in the hardware division back then. This brings back so many memories . I spent many hours fighting with hmc and vios
Cool!
Any chance you will be looking into running different operating systems other than AIX?
(I admit that I have no idea what the requirements are to run (stock or patched versions of) MacOS and/or Windows on PPC. Would be cool to run either of those on these, unless they are too new)
It is great watching these. I can’t remember if I commented before, but I’m a network engineer and I definitely networked some of these together with our Linux team. I never got to see these parts so it’s cool to see! Networking these HMCs needing to be on the same layer 2 was interesting on how usually segment our areas today
It's always a good day when I see you've posted again. I love the focus on esoteric enterprise gear! I've learned a ton from watching your videos. Keep it up!
29:34 That's what she said 😂
I had a B50 with AIX 5.1 in 2002. CDE rocks.
I work in a company that uses a Power10 machine running IBM i. Will note that the ASMI looks nothing that that now. It looks very similar to IBM’s website when it comes down to the design and almost feels like it’s using react or some other modern JavaScript framework.
Always a good day when a new clabretro video drops! 🤗🤘
Most, if not all of Dell's KVMs are from Avocent, so the modules should be intetcompatible. That KVM looks like a rebadged DSR1020, of which i have two. Glad to know about the fan mod for them.
ASMI runs on an embedded PPC processor on the FSP (flexible service processor) card that connects to the HMC. That's how the HMC can connect to the system before any LPAR are defined or stared. Some of the SRC (system reference codes) on the LCP operator's panel reference boot codes for the FSP.
Great vid! I did a fair amount of work with p-series back in that time frame. Good systems- the HMC was a bit of a pain, but when set up, it was a great system.
For early 2000s to mid 2000s hardware, Firefox portable 2-3 are quite good
Ever think about getting an IBM blade server? Problem I think you may hit with those is, I think they take 3 phase power.
IIRC they have both x86 and PowerPC blades, they also need a SAN.
If you get into IBM/Lenovo enterprise gear maybe look up the youtuber "My Play House" he's super big into IBM/Lenovo enterprise gear.
Ooooh I see a graphite airport in the background…are we getting an 802.11b tutorial next? 🤔
Excellent video (99% of it went over my head 😂). Any video plans on some ancient Mac stuff such as OS X Server or some Xserves?
Another clab drop!! What an awesome Friday!
I can be wrong but it almost looks like the processor on the bad one has overheated or burnt, but i can have wrong.. I may have a pair of old Dell SCSI disks laying that i dont need that you may have better use for…. Keep up the interesting videos…
Hi.
@NCommander was running Doom on RS/6000 — pretty interesting.
30:16 „DIE Shot” just some additional facts: Those are 2 dual core P5s and their respective L3 caches. L1 and L2 are integrated in the chips, where each L2 is accessible by both cores. This quad core “CPU” (called QCM as in quad core module) is actually 2 DCMs combined, and the L3 not shared between all cores on the module but only its respective DCM (dual core module) ones. QCM allowed IBM a very effective method of nearly doubling the theoretical performance and also retain the small footprint of the modules. Each of these CPUs is SMT2 ready, allowing for a theoretical 8 “cores”. SMT is enabled dynamically when needed and disabled, when more processing power is required. That’s a key factor in allowing micro partitioning as seen before you wiped all LPARs.
Disclaimer: That’s very theoretical knowledge (never had the chance to have a P5 in hands, only P3 and P4) so please correct me if something was wrong
Great way to start the weekend!
I start salivating when I see non x86 stuff on this channel. Great vid!
The pSeries is the “new” IBM approach to run PowerPC, where they converged the RS/6000 (with AIX) and the AS/400 (with OS/400, now called IBM i). Historically AS/400 comes from custom RISC silicon from System/36 and System/38, but they transitioned OS/400 to PowerPC in the late 90s.
All of these (S/36, S/38, AS/400, RS/6000) where called “mini” computers, as opposed to “regular” computers (mainframes, so System 360, System 370, …) and “micro” computers (PCs). AS/400s were and are used a lot in mid-sized institutions (retail chains, warehouses, smaller banks, smaller governments, etc)..
Anyway, now that you have two machines pSeries working, you should be able to do some Disaster Recovery tricks, where you lpars automatically run on the other box if the primary is online. Not sure if you can do it without shared storage tho..
which traces back to AS/400 and System/36 and System/38. All of these (S/36, S/38, AS/400, and were “mini”computers, as opposed to big “mainframes” and single-user “micro-computers”.
Just placed my like
excellent video as always man! the LPAR is so confusing, but seem like it was a powerful thing for back in the day
I'm not even knowledgeable about these machines but it's always interesting to watch and learn with your videos.
I too am amazed at the amount of cool computer stuff you can do…..if you just wait a couple decades for the hardware to become legacy. Really enjoy your videos!