Deploying a system plan

Use this procedure to deploy all or part of a system plan to a managed system using a Hardware Management Console (HMC). When you deploy a system plan, the HMC creates logical partitions on the managed system according to the specifications in the system plan.

Before you deploy a system plan, complete the following:

Ensure that the system-plan file exists on the HMC. If the system-plan file does not exist on the HMC, you must import the system-plan file into the HMC. For more information about importing a system-plan file, see Importing a system-plan file.
Delete the logical partition that came with your server, and delete any other logical partition that is not in the system plan. Every server comes with one logical partition with one partition profile. The name of the logical partition is the serial number of the managed system, and the name of the partition profile is default. All of the physical hardware resources on the system are automatically assigned to this logical partition. The logical partition allows you to power on the server and verify that the physical hardware is connected and reporting to the server. After you are done verifying the physical hardware, you must delete this logical partition before the HMC allows you to deploy your system plan. Verify that this partition is the service partition for the managed system. It can not be deleted until it is no longer the service partition. Use the Server Management for the managed system and set the properties for the service partition field to Unassigned. Then remove the logical partition.
To remove the default partition profile, complete the following steps:
1. In either the Web-based Systems Management or native HMC interface select Server and Partition > Server Management.
2. Right click on the managed system in the content pane, and select Properties.
3. Select Unassigned from the Service Partition box on the Properties panel, and click Ok.
4. On the main content panel, click the Plus icon for the managed system to expand the managed system and list the available partitions.
5. Right-click the default partition and select Delete, and then click Ok.
Shut down any logical partitions that you have already deployed to the managed system from the system plan.
Ensure that you are not performing any other operations on the managed system using this HMC or any other HMC that is attached to the managed system.

To deploy a system plan, you must be a super administrator. For more information about user roles, refer to Tasks and roles.

To deploy a system plan on a managed system using the HMC, complete the following:

In the navigation area of your HMC, select System Plans.
In the contents area, select Manage System Plans.
Select the system-plan file that contains the system plan that you want to deploy and click Deploy. If you are not certain which system-plan file to choose, you can select a system-plan file and click View to list the contents of a system-plan file in a browser window.
Verify that the system-plan file that you want to deploy is displayed in and click Next.
If there are multiple system plans within the system-plan file, the wizard prompts you to select the system plan that you want to deploy from that system-plan file. Select the system plan that you want to deploy in the System plan to deploy field and click Next.
Choose the managed system to which you want to deploy the system plan in Managed system and click Next. If the system plan does not match the managed system to which you want to deploy the plan, the wizard displays a dialog that informs you of this. Click OK to continue or Cancel to select a different system plan.
Wait for the wizard to validate the managed system and its hardware against the system plan. The validation process can take several minutes.
If the validation process completes successfully, click Next. If the validation process does not complete successfully, correct the issues indicated by the dialog, click Cancel to exit the wizard, and restart this procedure from the beginning. If the validation failed, you should also run the following command on the invalid system: mksysplan -m name_of_managed_system -f name_of_new_system_plan.sysplan.
This creates a new system plan that can be viewed and compared to the and the old system plan to help diagnose any problems.
If you do not want to create all of the logical partitions, partition profiles, virtual adapter types, or virtual adapters in the system plan, clear the boxes in the Deploy column beside the logical partitions, partition profiles, virtual adapter types, or virtual adapters that you do not want to create. Virtual serial adapters are required in virtual slots 0 and 1 for each logical partition. You cannot create the logical partition unless you create these virtual serial adapters.
Click Next to continue.
Review the system deployment step order and click Finish. The HMC creates the specified logical partitions. This process can take several minutes.

After you have deployed the system plan, complete the following:

Locate the physical disk I/O adapters that belong to each logical partition and verify that the disk drives that are attached to these physical I/O adapters will support your desired configuration for each logical partition.
Install operating systems and software on the logical partitions. For installation procedures for the AIX^®, i5/OS^®, and Linux^® operating systems, refer to Installing operating systems.
Configure the virtual I/O adapters that are assigned to each logical partition within the operating systems so that virtual storage resources can be shared among logical partitions.

You can also remove the system plan from the HMC by selecting the system plan in the Manage System Plans window, clicking Remove, and clicking Remove System Plan to confirm.