IBM PowerVM Live Partition Mobility

IBM PowerVM Live Partition Mobility

by Scott Vetter, John E Bailey, Thomas Prokop, Guido Somers
Released March 2009
Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
ISBN: 9780738432427

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Book description

Live Partition Mobility is the next step in the IBMs Power Systems™ virtualization continuum. It can be combined with other virtualization technologies, such as logical partitions, Live Workload Partitions, and the SAN Volume Controller, to provide a fully virtualized computing platform that offers the degree of system and infrastructure flexibility required by today's production data centers.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication discusses how Live Partition Mobility can help technical professionals, enterprise architects, and system administrators:

* Migrate entire running AIX® and Linux® partitions and hosted applications from one physical server to another without disrupting services and loads.
* Meet stringent service-level agreements.
* Rebalance loads across systems quickly, with support for multiple concurrent migrations.
* Use a migration wizard for single partition migrations.

This book can help you understand, plan, prepare, and perform partition migration on IBM Power Systems POWER6™ technology-based servers that are running AIX.

Table of contents

  1. Front cover
  2. Figures
  3. Tables
  4. Notices
    1. Trademarks
  5. Preface
    1. The team that wrote this book
    2. Become a published author
    3. Comments welcome
  6. Chapter 1. Overview
    1. 1.1 Introduction
    2. 1.2 Partition migration
    3. 1.3 Cross-system flexibility is the requirement
    4. 1.4 Live Partition Mobility is the answer
      1. 1.4.1 Inactive migration
      2. 1.4.2 Active migration
    5. 1.5 Architecture
      1. 1.5.1 Hardware infrastructure
      2. 1.5.2 Components involved
    6. 1.6 Operation
      1. 1.6.1 Inactive migration
      2. 1.6.2 Active migration
    7. 1.7 Combining mobility with other features
      1. 1.7.1 High availability clusters
      2. 1.7.2 AIX Live Application Mobility
  7. Chapter 2. Live Partition Mobility mechanisms
    1. 2.1 Live Partition Mobility components
      1. 2.1.1 Other components affecting Live Partition Mobility
    2. 2.2 Live Partition Mobility prerequisites
      1. 2.2.1 Capability and compatibility
      2. 2.2.2 Readiness
      3. 2.2.3 Migratability
    3. 2.3 Partition migration high-level workflow
    4. 2.4 Inactive partition migration
      1. 2.4.1 Introduction
      2. 2.4.2 Validation phase
      3. 2.4.3 Migration phase
      4. 2.4.4 Migration completion phase
      5. 2.4.5 Stopping an inactive partition migration
    5. 2.5 Active partition migration
      1. 2.5.1 Active partition state
      2. 2.5.2 Preparation
      3. 2.5.3 Validation phase
      4. 2.5.4 Partition migration phase
      5. 2.5.5 Migration completion phase
      6. 2.5.6 Virtual I/O Server selection
      7. 2.5.7 Source and destination mover service partitions selection
      8. 2.5.8 Stopping an active migration
    6. 2.6 Performance considerations
    7. 2.7 AIX and active migration
    8. 2.8 Linux and active migration
  8. Chapter 3. Requirements and preparation
    1. 3.1 Introduction
    2. 3.2 Skill considerations
    3. 3.3 Requirements for Live Partition Mobility
    4. 3.4 Live Partition Mobility preparation checks
    5. 3.5 Preparing the systems for Live Partition Mobility
      1. 3.5.1 HMC
      2. 3.5.2 Logical memory block size
      3. 3.5.3 Battery power
      4. 3.5.4 Available memory
      5. 3.5.5 Available processors to support Live Partition Mobility
    6. 3.6 Preparing the HMC for Live Partition Mobility
    7. 3.7 Preparing the Virtual I/O Servers
      1. 3.7.1 Virtual I/O Server version
      2. 3.7.2 Mover service partition
      3. 3.7.3 Synchronize time-of-day clocks
    8. 3.8 Preparing the mobile partition for mobility
      1. 3.8.1 Operating system version
      2. 3.8.2 RMC connections
      3. 3.8.3 Disable redundant error path reporting
      4. 3.8.4 Virtual serial adapters
      5. 3.8.5 Partition workload groups
      6. 3.8.6 Barrier-synchronization register
      7. 3.8.7 Huge pages
      8. 3.8.8 Physical or dedicated I/O
      9. 3.8.9 Name of logical partition profile
      10. 3.8.10 Mobility-safe or mobility-aware
      11. 3.8.11 Changed partition profiles
    9. 3.9 Configuring the external storage
    10. 3.10 Network considerations
    11. 3.11 Distance considerations
  9. Chapter 4. Basic partition migration scenario
    1. 4.1 Basic Live Partition Mobility environment
      1. 4.1.1 Minimum requirements
      2. 4.1.2 Inactive partition migration
      3. 4.1.3 Active partition migration
    2. 4.2 Virtual IO Server attributes
      1. 4.2.1 Mover service partition
      2. 4.2.2 Virtual Asynchronous Services Interface device
      3. 4.2.3 Time reference
    3. 4.3 Preparing for an active partition migration
      1. 4.3.1 Enabling the mover service partition
      2. 4.3.2 Enabling the Time reference
    4. 4.4 Migrating a logical partition
      1. 4.4.1 Performing the validation steps and eliminating errors
      2. 4.4.2 Inactive or active migration
      3. 4.4.3 Migrating a mobile partition
  10. Chapter 5. Advanced topics
    1. 5.1 Dual Virtual I/O Servers
      1. 5.1.1 Dual Virtual I/O Server and client mirroring
      2. 5.1.2 Dual Virtual I/O Server and multipath I/O
      3. 5.1.3 Single to dual Virtual I/O Server
    2. 5.2 Multiple concurrent migrations
    3. 5.3 Dual HMC considerations
    4. 5.4 Remote Live Partition Mobility
      1. 5.4.1 Requirements for remote migration
      2. 5.4.2 HMC considerations
      3. 5.4.3 Remote validation and migration
      4. 5.4.4 Command-line interface enhancements
    5. 5.5 Multiple shared processor pools
      1. 5.5.1 Shared processor pools in migration and validation GUI
      2. 5.5.2 Processor pools on command line
    6. 5.6 Migrating a partition with physical resources
      1. 5.6.1 Overview
      2. 5.6.2 Configure a Virtual I/O Server on the source system
      3. 5.6.3 Configure a Virtual I/O Server on the destination system
      4. 5.6.4 Configure storage on the mobile partition
      5. 5.6.5 Configure network on the mobile partition
      6. 5.6.6 Remove adapters from the mobile partition
      7. 5.6.7 Ready to migrate
    7. 5.7 The command-line interface
      1. 5.7.1 The migrlpar command
      2. 5.7.2 The lslparmigr command
      3. 5.7.3 The lssyscfg command
      4. 5.7.4 The mkauthkeys command
      5. 5.7.5 A more complex example
    8. 5.8 Migration awareness
    9. 5.9 Making applications migration-aware
      1. 5.9.1 Migration phases
      2. 5.9.2 Making programs migration aware using APIs
      3. 5.9.3 Making applications migration-aware using scripts
    10. 5.10 Making kernel extension migration aware
    11. 5.11 Virtual Fibre Channel
      1. 5.11.1 Basic virtual Fibre Channel Live Partition Mobility preparation
      2. 5.11.2 Migration of a virtual Fibre Channel based partition
      3. 5.11.3 Dual Virtual I/O Server and virtual Fibre Channel multipathing
      4. 5.11.4 Live Partition Mobility with Heterogeneous I/O
    12. 5.12 Processor compatibility modes
      1. 5.12.1 Verifying the processor compatibility mode of mobile partition
  11. Chapter 6. Migration status
    1. 6.1 Progress and reference code location
    2. 6.2 Recovery
    3. 6.3 A recovery example
  12. Chapter 7. Integrated Virtualization Manager for Live Partition Mobility
    1. 7.1 Migration types
    2. 7.2 Requirements for Live Partition Mobility on IVM
    3. 7.3 How active Partition Mobility works
    4. 7.4 How inactive Partition Mobility works
    5. 7.5 Validation for active Partition Mobility
    6. 7.6 Validation for inactive Partition Mobility
    7. 7.7 Preparation for partition migration
      1. 7.7.1 Preparing the source and destination servers
      2. 7.7.2 Preparing the management partition for Partition Mobility
      3. 7.7.3 Preparing the mobile partition for Partition Mobility
      4. 7.7.4 Preparing the virtual SCSI configuration for Partition Mobility
      5. 7.7.5 Preparing the virtual Fibre Channel configuration
      6. 7.7.6 Preparing the network configuration for Partition Mobility
      7. 7.7.7 Validating the Partition Mobility environment
      8. 7.7.8 Migrating the mobile partition
  13. Appendix A. Error codes and logs
    1. SRCs, current state
    2. SRC error codes
    3. IVM source and destination systems error codes
    4. Operating system error logs
  14. Related publications
    1. IBM Redbooks
    2. Other publications
    3. Online resources
    4. How to get IBM Redbooks
    5. Help from IBM
  15. Back cover

Product information

  • Title: IBM PowerVM Live Partition Mobility
  • Author(s): Scott Vetter, John E Bailey, Thomas Prokop, Guido Somers
  • Release date: March 2009
  • Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
  • ISBN: 9780738432427