The minimum required HMC version for Power E1050 is V10R1 M1020. V10R1 is supported only on 7063-CR1, 7063-CR2, and Virtual HMC appliances. It is not supported on 7042 machine types. HMC with V10R1 cannot manage Power7 processor-based systems.
An HMC that is running V10R1 M1020 includes the following features:
Ê HMC OS Secure Boot support for the 7063-CR2 appliance.
Ê Ability to configure login retries and suspended time and support for inactivity expiration in the password policy.
Ê Ability to specify the HMC location and data replication for groups.
Ê VIOS Management Enhancements:
– Prepare for VIOS maintenance:
• Validation for redundancy for the storage and network that is provided by VIOS to customer partitions.
• Switch path of redundant storage and network to start failover.
• Roll back to original configuration on failure of preparation.
• Audit various validation and preparation steps that are performed.
• Report any failure that is seen during preparation.
– CLI and scheduled operations support for VIOS backup or restore VIOS configurations and SSP configurations
– Option to back up or restore a Shared Storage Pool configuration in HMC
– Options to import or export the backup files to external storage
– Option to fail over all vNICs from one VIOS to another one
Ê Supports 128 and 256 MB local memory bus (LMB) sizes.
Ê Automatically choose the fastest network for LPM memory transfer.
Chapter 1. IBM Power E1050 overview 25
Ê HMC user experience enhancements:
– Usability and performance improvements
– Enhancements to help connect global search
– Quick view of serviceable events
– More progress information for UI wizards
Ê Allow LPM/Remote Restart when a virtual optical device is assigned to a partition.
Ê UAK support.
Ê Configure the Virtualization Management Interface (VMI) connection to the Power Hypervisor for the Power E1050 and for the Power10 scale-out servers.
Ê Scheduled operation function: In the ESA, there is a new feature that allows customers to receive message alerts only if scheduled operations fail (see Figure 1-11).
Figure 1-11 HMC alert feature
Log retention of the HMC audit trail also is increased.
1.8.6 Configuring the VMI
Starting with the Power10 scale-out servers and the Power E1050 server, IBM Power servers are migrating to an industry-standard service processor chipset that is known as eBMC. As part of the eBMC transition, the virtualization management communication path was removed from the service processor.
This path is something specific to PowerVM with the HMC. eBMC is based on of the OpenBMC code base, which is platform-neutral. Developers wanted to minimize the number of PowerVM specific functions in eBMC.
The industry-standard service processor communication protocols and the performance of the service processor do not lend themselves well to supporting the virtualization management traffic pass-through like with the FSP in the past. VMI was invented to satisfy the need for a new network connection point for the HMC.
26 IBM Power E1050: Technical Overview and Introduction
The VMI design is a combination of HMC and Power Hypervisor support for a new VMI network endpoint for handling virtualization management. The service processor now has two IP addresses for each system management network port: one for system management (eBMC), and one for virtualization management (VMI).
Note: Each port also has two MAC addresses, that is, BMC and VMI each have one.
The eBMC IP address is the equivalent of the FSP IP address in previous generations of IBM Power servers. The WebUI, Representational State Transfer (REST) interfaces, and others, all use the eBMC IP address. This IP address is the only one that users interact with directly.
The VMI IP address is used for virtualization management. This IP address is the one that the HMC used to communicate with Power Hypervisor for partition management and consoles. Users do not interact directly with this IP address. From a customer perspective, other than having two IP addresses on the service network instead of one, there is no difference from an HMC user perspective.
All traffic between the HMC and VMI is encrypted with TLS by using a system unique certificate.
Figure 1-12 shows a dual HMC connection to the eBMC of an Power E1050 server.
Figure 1-12 Dual HMC connection to a Power E1050 server
Chapter 1. IBM Power E1050 overview 27
VMI supports both DHCP and static IP address configurations. After the server is connected to the HMC and configured by setting the access passwords, you may configure the VMI. To configure the VMI, click VMI Configuration in the HMC GUI, as shown in Figure 1-13. In the configuration dialog box, you may switch between DHCP or a static IP address. The default VMI connection setting (not the eBMC connection) for a new Power E1050 server is static, so if you want to use DHCP, you must change the configuration from static to DHCP before you power on the server.
Figure 1-13 VMI configuration of a Power E1050 server
Here is a summary for configuring a new server that has factory settings:
1. Connect the Ethernet cable from the eBMC port to the internal HMC network.
2. Plug in the power cables. The eBMC starts and obtains the IP address configuration from the DHCP server on the HMCs.
3. Enter the access password or, if HMC auto-discovers, the default credentials are used.
4. The server shows as Power Off, but it is now in a manageable state.
5. Configure the VMI to change from static to DHCP, as shown in Figure 1-13.
6. Power on the server. The VMI obtains its IP address, and the HMC to VMI connection is established automatically.