Retrieve inactive and unallocated hardware resources

Select this option to indicate that you want the HMC to use the hardware discovery process to create a system plan. Using hardware discovery, the HMC can capture hardware information for all I/O devices for the managed system that does not have a partition assignment, as well as hardware with assignments to inactive partitions.

When you select this option, the process that the HMC uses to retrieve and include hardware information for the new system plan varies depending on certain conditions, as follows:

1. If the partitions are active on the managed system from which you are creating a system plan when you select this option, the HMC uses the inventory gathering process to collection information for the system plan. The HMC retrieves hardware inventory information for I/O devices for any inactive partitions from the hardware inventory cache on the managed system and adds this information to the new system plan.
2. If the partitions are inactive on the managed system from which you are creating a system plan when you select this option, the HMC retrieves inactive and unallocated hardware resources by using the hardware discovery process. The hardware discovery process collects hardware information for I/O devices for the inactive partitions, as well as information for I/O devices that do not have any partition assignment on the managed system.

Note: Selecting this option can increase the time it takes to create the system plan.