A system plan is a specification of the hardware and the logical partitions contained in one or more systems. Each system plan is contained within a system-plan file. You can import a system-plan file into a Hardware Management Console (HMC) and deploy the system plan to managed systems that are managed by the HMC. When you deploy a system plan to a managed system, the HMC creates the logical partitions specified in the system plan on the managed system. Depending on how the logical partitions are related to each other in the system plan, you can create all the logical partitions specified within the system plan, or you can choose which logical partitions you want to create from the system plan.
You can use the System Planning Tool (SPT) to specify and validate the hardware and logical partitions for a managed system, and then save the specification to a system-plan file. You can then import the system-plan file into the HMC that manages the managed system and deploy the system plan to the managed system. You can alternately use the mksysplan command in the HMC command line interface to create a system plan based upon the logical partition configuration of one of the managed systems that are managed by the HMC. You can then use the system plan to create identical logical partition configurations on managed systems with identical hardware. For more information about how you can create a system plan based upon an existing logical partition configuration, see the man page for the mksysplan command.
System plans are designed to create logical partitions on new managed systems that do not already have logical partitions created on them. You can choose to deploy a system plan in stages, with some logical partitions being created in one stage, and other logical partitions being created in later stages. You cannot, however, deploy a system plan to a managed system if the managed system already has logical partitions that are not in the Machine Default Configuration. Also, if you deploy a system plan in stages, and you change the resource allocations on the logical partitions on the managed system between stages, you can avoid validation problems in later stages by re-creating the system plan with the changed resource allocations.
Before you can use a system plan to create logical partitions, the system-plan file must exist on the HMC that manages the managed system to which you want to deploy the system plan. If the system-plan file does not already exist on the HMC, you must import the file into the HMC. You can import the file into the HMC using either of the following methods:
After you import the system-plan file into an HMC, you can deploy the system plan within that file to the managed systems that are managed by the HMC.
The system-plan file uses the file suffix of .sysplan.
When you deploy a system plan, the HMC validates the system plan. The HMC deploys a system plan to a managed system only if the system plan schema level is supported by the HMC, the format of the system plan is valid, and the hardware and each existing logical partition on the managed system passes validation.
When validating the hardware on the managed system, the HMC compares the following information from the system plan with the hardware available on the managed system:
The hardware described in the system plan passes validation if it matches the hardware specified by the managed system. The hardware on the managed system can contain resources in addition to those specified in the system plan and still pass validation, but the hardware on the managed system must at least match the hardware specified in the system plan. For example, a system plan specifies a server with two processors, 8 GB of memory, and a specific placement of physical I/O adapters within the system unit. A server that contains two processors, 16 GB of memory, a matching placement of physical I/O adapters within the system unit, and an expansion unit with additional physical I/O adapters would allow the system to pass validation. A server that contains 4 GB of memory would cause the system to fail validation. A system plan would also fail validation if the system plan specifies one type of physical I/O adapter in a slot but the actual system unit has a different type of physical I/O adapter in that slot. (However, if the system plan specifies an empty slot, validation allows any type of physical I/O adapter to be in that slot on the actual system.) The HMC does not validate the disk drives that are attached to physical I/O adapters against the disk drives specified in the system plan. You must ensure that the disk drives installed in the managed system support your desired logical partition configuration. Internal Tnn slots are not validated either.
When validating an existing logical partition, the HMC validates the following for that logical partition. Validation fails for the existing logical partition if any step fails. Any existing partition found on the managed system must appear in the system plan and must match the system plan as it appears in the managed system.
For example, if the server has an existing logical partition with a partition ID of 1, the HMC looks for the logical partition in the system plan that has a partition ID of 1. If this logical partition exists and has a partition profile that is named SUPPORT, the HMC looks at the existing logical partition to see if it also has a partition profile that is named SUPPORT. If so, the HMC verifies that the resources specified in the SUPPORT partition profile in the system plan are contained in the SUPPORT partition profile in the existing logical partition.
When the HMC validates partition profiles, it compares the following resources in the partition profiles:
For example, if the SUPPORT partition profile in the system plan specifies 2 GB of memory and the SUPPORT partition profile for the existing logical partition specifies 3 GB of memory, the amount of memory is valid. If the SUPPORT partition profile in the system plan specifies 4 GB of memory and the SUPPORT partition profile for the existing logical partition specifies 3 GB of memory, the amount of memory is invalid. If physical I/O slot P1 is assigned to the SUPPORT partition profile in the system plan but not to the SUPPORT partition profile for the existing logical partition, the physical slot assignment is invalid. If physical I/O slot P2 is not assigned to the SUPPORT partition profile in the system plan, it does not matter whether slot P2 is assigned to the SUPPORT partition profile for the existing logical partition.
Also, the HMC does not install the operating systems on the logical partitions. Because of this, the HMC is also unable to configure virtual I/O adapters within the operating systems so that logical partitions can provide virtual storage resources to other logical partitions. After the system plan is deployed, you must perform these tasks manually.