This IBM® Redbooks® publication provides best practices for planning, installing, maintaining, and monitoring the IBM PowerVM® Enterprise Edition virtualization features on IBM POWER7® processor technology-based servers. PowerVM is a combination of hardware, PowerVM Hypervisor, and software, which includes other virtualization features, such as the Virtual I/O Server. This publication is intended for experienced IT specialists and IT architects who want to learn about PowerVM best practices, and focuses on the following topics: Planning and general best practices Installation, migration, and configuration Administration and maintenance Storage and networking Performance monitoring Security PowerVM advanced features This publication is written by a group of seven PowerVM experts from different countries around the world. These experts came together to bring their broad IT skills, depth of knowledge, and experiences from thousands of installations and configurations in different IBM client sites.

The Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) is part of the IBM PowerVM® feature on IBM® Power SystemsTM and part of the IBM POWER® HypervisorTM. The VIOS is also supported on IBM BladeCenter®. The server is a single-function appliance that is in the logical partition (LPAR) of the Power Systems server. The VIOS facilitates the sharing of physical I/O resources between client partitions (IBM AIX®, IBM i, and Linux) within the server. The Virtual I/O Server provides a virtual SCSI target, N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) target, and Shared Ethernet Adapter (SEA) virtual I/O function to client LPARs. The Virtual I/O Server has the capability of a hardware management function, the Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM). IVM is a simplified hardware management solution that inherits most of the Hardware Management Console (HMC) features. The console manages a single server, avoiding the need of a dedicated personal computer. This device is designed to provide a solution that enables the administrator to reduce system setup time and to make hardware management easier, at a lower cost. IVM provides a management model for a single system. Although it does not offer all of the HMC capabilities, it enables the exploitation of PowerVM technology. IVM targets the small and medium systems that are best suited for this product. IVM provides the following functions: - Shared Storage Pool - IBM Active MemoryTM Sharing (AMS) - Live Partition Mobility (LPM) - Task manager monitor for long-running tasks - Security additions such as viosecure and firewall, and other improvements There are many environments where there is the need for small partitioned systems, either for test reasons or for specific requirements, for which the HMC solution is not ideal. A sample situation is where there are small partitioned systems that cannot share a common HMC because they are in multiple locations. In these cases, IVM works. Using IVM, companies can more cost-effectively consolidate multiple partitions onto a single server. With its intuitive, browser-based interface, the IVM is easy to use and significantly reduces the time and effort that is required to manage virtual devices and partitions. This IBM RedpaperTM publication provides an introduction to IVM by describing its architecture and showing how to install and configure a partitioned server by using its capabilities. This document is intended for IT personnel who have a complete understanding of partitioning before reading this document.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication provides an introduction to PowerVMTM virtualization technologies on Power System servers. PowerVM is a combination of hardware, firmware, and software that provides CPU, network, and disk virtualization. These are the main virtualization technologies: POWER7, POWER6, and POWER5 hardware POWER Hypervisor Virtual I/O Server Though the PowerVM brand includes partitioning, management software, and other offerings, this publication focuses on the virtualization technologies that are part of the PowerVM Standard and Enterprise Editions. This publication is also designed to be an introduction guide for system administrators, providing instructions for these tasks: Configuration and creation of partitions and resources on the HMC Installation and configuration of the Virtual I/O Server Creation and installation of virtualized partitions Examples using AIX, IBM i, and Linux This edition has been updated with the latest updates available and an improved content organization.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication pulls together diverse information regarding the best way to design, implement, and manage a Parallel Sysplex® to deliver the levels of performance and availability required by your organization. This book should be of interest to system programmers, availability managers, and database administrators who are interested in verifying that your systems conform to IBM best practices for a Parallel Sysplex environment. In addition to z/OS® and the sysplex hardware configuration, this book also covers the major IBM subsystems: CICS® DB2® IMSTM MQ WebSphere® Application Server To get the best value from this book, readers should have hands-on experience with Parallel Sysplex and have working knowledge of how your systems are set up and why they were set up in that manner.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication presents a best practices guide for DB2® and InfoSphereTM Warehouse performance on a AIX® 6L with Power SystemsTM virtualization environment. It covers Power hardware features such as PowerVMTM, multi-page support, Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability (RAS) and how to best exploit them with DB2 LUW workloads for both transactional and data warehousing systems. The popularity and reach of DB2 and InfoSphere Warehouse has grown in recent years. Enterprises are relying more on these products for their mission-critical transactional and data warehousing workloads. It is critical that these products be supported by an adequately planned infrastructure. This publication offers a reference architecture to build a DB2 solution for transactional and data warehousing workloads using the rich features offered by Power systems. IBM Power Systems have been leading players in the server industry for decades. Power Systems provide great performance while delivering reliability and flexibility to the infrastructure. This book presents a reference architecture to build a DB2 solution for transactional and data warehousing workloads using the rich features offered by Power systems. It aims to demonstrate the benefits DB2 and InfoSphere Warehouse can derive from a Power Systems infrastructure and how Power Systems support these products. The book is intended as a guide for a Power Systems specialist to understand the DB2 and InfoSphere Warehouse environment and for a DB2 and InfoSphere Warehouse specialist to understand the facilities available for Power Systems supporting these products.

IBM® PowerVM® virtualization technology is a combination of hardware and software that supports and manages the virtual environments on POWER5-, POWER5+, IBM POWER6®, and IBM POWER7®-based systems. PowerVM is available on IBM Power SystemsTM, and IBM BladeCenter® servers as optional Editions, and is supported by the IBM AIX®, IBM i, and Linux operating systems. You can use this set of comprehensive systems technologies and services to aggregate and manage resources by using a consolidated, logical view. Deploying PowerVM virtualization and IBM Power Systems offers you the following benefits: Lower energy costs through server consolidation Reduced cost of your existing infrastructure Better management of the growth, complexity, and risk of your infrastructure This IBM Redbooks® publication is an extension of IBM PowerVM Virtualization Introduction and Configuration, SG24-7940. It provides an organized view of best practices for managing and monitoring your PowerVM environment concerning virtualized resources managed by the Virtual I/O Server.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication addresses performance tuning topics to help leverage the virtualization strengths of the POWER® platform to solve clients' system resource utilization challenges, and maximize system throughput and capacity. We examine the performance monitoring tools, utilities, documentation, and other resources available to help technical teams provide optimized business solutions and support for applications running on IBM POWER systems' virtualized environments. The book offers application performance examples deployed on IBM Power SystemsTM utilizing performance monitoring tools to leverage the comprehensive set of POWER virtualization features: Logical Partitions (LPARs), micro-partitioning, active memory sharing, workload partitions, and more. We provide a well-defined and documented performance tuning model in a POWER system virtualized environment to help you plan a foundation for scaling, capacity, and optimization . This book targets technical professionals (technical consultants, technical support staff, IT Architects, and IT Specialists) responsible for providing solutions and support on IBM POWER systems, including performance tuning.

Booting servers from a storage area network (SAN) is being used increasingly in complex data center environments today, due to its significant benefits over the traditional method of booting from local disks. SAN Boot enables organizations to maximize consolidation of their IT resources, minimize their equipment costs, and realize the considerable management benefits of centralizing the boot process. In SAN Boot, you can deploy diskless servers in an environment where the boot disk is located on (often RAID-capable) storage connected to the SAN. The server (initiator) communicates with the storage device (target) through the SAN using the Fibre Channel host bus adapter (HBA). The system downtime is greatly minimized in case a critical component such as a processor, memory, or host bus adapter fails and needs to be replaced. The system administrator needs to swap only the hardware and reconfigure the HBA's BIOS, switch zoning, and host-port definitions on the storage server. The system image still exists on the logical drive, therefore the server is fully operational after the hardware swap and configuration change is completed. This IBM® Redbooks® publication can help you with the SAN Boot implementation. We present various SAN Boot scenarios using IBM System Storage® products that include DS5000, DS8000®, XIV®, and SVC. The operating systems that are covered include Windows 2008, Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux, and VMware.

This IBM® Redbooks publication is a comprehensive guide that covers the IBM AIX® operating system (OS) layout capabilities, distinct features, system installation, and maintenance, which includes AIX security, trusted environment, and compliance integration, with the benefits of IBM Power Virtualization Management (PowerVM®) and IBM Power Virtualization Center (IBM PowerVC), which includes cloud capabilities and automation types. The objective of this book is to introduce IBM AIX modernization features and integration with different environments: General AIX enhancements AIX Live Kernel Update individually or using Network Installation Manager (NIM) AIX security features and integration AIX networking enhancements PowerVC integration and features for cloud environments AIX deployment using IBM Terraform and IBM Cloud Automation Manager AIX automation that uses configuration management tools PowerVM enhancements and features Latest disaster recovery (DR) solutions AIX Logical Volume Manager (LVM) and Enhanced Journaled File System (JFS2) AIX installation and maintenance techniques

This IBM® RedpaperTM publication describes the adapter-based virtualization capabilities that are being deployed in high-end IBM POWER7+TM processor-based servers. Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) is a virtualization technology on IBM Power Systems servers. SR-IOV allows multiple logical partitions (LPARs) to share a PCIe adapter with little or no run time involvement of a hypervisor or other virtualization intermediary. SR-IOV does not replace the existing virtualization capabilities that are offered as part of the IBM PowerVM® offerings. Rather, SR-IOV compliments them with additional capabilities. This paper describes many aspects of the SR-IOV technology, including: A comparison of SR-IOV with standard virtualization technology Overall benefits of SR-IOV Architectural overview of SR-IOV Planning requirements SR-IOV deployment models that use standard I/O virtualization Configuring the adapter for dedicated or shared modes Tips for maintaining and troubleshooting your system Scenarios for configuring your system This paper is directed to clients, IBM Business Partners, and system administrators who are involved with planning, deploying, configuring, and maintaining key virtualization technologies.