Create System Plan

Use this page to create a new system plan for a system that this Hardware Management Console (HMC) manages. The new system plan contains specifications for the logical partitions and partition profiles of the managed system that you used to create the plan.

The new system plan also can contain hardware information that the HMC is able to obtain from the selected managed system. However, the amount of hardware information that the HMC can capture for the new system plan varies based on the method that the HMC uses to gather the hardware information. There are two methods that the HMC potentially can use: inventory gathering and hardware discovery.

System plan inventory gathering

The HMC always performs inventory gathering to capture detailed information for hardware that has an assignment to an active partition.

To maximize the amount of hardware information that the inventory gathering process is able to capture, ensure that you meet the following prerequisites and conditions:

• You must power on the managed system and activate the logical partitions on the managed system before creating the system plan. You cannot create a system plan if the managed server is in either the power off state or the recovery state. Note: The system can also be in the 'Standby' state.
• To ensure that Linux systems and partitions can perform inventory gathering, you might need to load the IBM Installation Toolkit for Linux on POWER, which is available at the IBM Service and productivity tools Web site (http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/lopdiags/installtools/home.html).

  Note: If you installed Linux on the partition as part of deploying a system plan on a system with HMC Version 7.3.3, the Deploy System Plan Wizard installed the necessary Toolkit packages as part of the Linux installation.

• You must set up Resource Monitoring and Control (RMC) prior to creating a system plan. Using RMC ensures that the inventory gathering process can capture more detailed hardware information. Without RMC, the inventory gathering process is not able to detect the types of disk drives installed on a managed system. An RMC connection also is required to configure the Virtual I/O Server and to collect data for Virtual I/O Server device mappings in system plans that contain this information.

Setting up your environment to maximize inventory gathering can cause the creation of the system plan to take several more minutes to complete. However, doing so allows the HMC to capture more complete information about the hardware allocated to the partitions on the managed system. For example, the HMC can capture disk drive and tape drive configuration information for an active partition in the new system plan.

Note: It is possible for an IBMi partition to have more than one HMC set up to manage it. In this situation if you want to use RMC to create a new system plan, you need to ensure that you create the system plan from the primary HMC for the partition because secondary HMCs can not use RMC.

To verify that the HMC can use RMC, complete the following steps:

1. In the HMC navigation pane, select HMC Management --> HMC Configuration to display the Customize Network Settings window.
2. Click LAN Adapters, select the appropriate adapter from the list, and click Details.
3. On the LAN Adapter page of the LAN Adapters Details window, ensure that Partition communication is selected.
4. On the Firewall page, in the Firewall Settings list, select all instances of RMC and click Allow Incoming, if necessary.
5. Click OK to close the LAN Adapter Details window.
6. Click OK to close the Customize Network Settings window.
7. Restart the HMC if you made any changes to these configuration settings.

For some operating systems, you might need to perform additional steps to ensure that RMC is configured and running properly. To learn more about configuring and using RMC, see the Reliable Scalable Cluster Technology (RSCT) documentation (http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/clresctr/vxrx/topic/com.ibm.cluster.rsct.doc/rsctbooks.html)

System plan hardware discovery

In some cases, the HMC can use hardware discovery, in addition to the inventory gathering process, to capture hardware I/O information for a new system plan. If the managed system is capable of hardware discovery, the Create System Plan page provides an additional option that you can select to capture a broader range of hardware information for the new system plan.

This option, called Retrieve inactive and unallocated hardware resources, allows you to capture hardware configuration information for all I/O devices for the managed system, regardless of the state of the hardware. Using hardware discovery, you can capture information about hardware that does not have a partition assignment, as well as hardware with assignments to inactive partitions.

On a system that has the hardware discovery capability, you can select the option to run hardware discovery when you power on the managed system. When this option is enabled, the system powers on in a special mode that performs the hardware discovery process and records hardware inventory information in a cache on the system. This collected information is then available for use when displaying data for I/O devices or when creating a system plan.

When you create a system plan and do not select the Retrieve inactive and unallocated hardware resources option, the HMC does not perform hardware discovery. The HMC still performs inventory gathering and retrieves hardware information for any active partitions on the managed server. The resulting new system plan contains hardware information from the inventory gathering process, as well as hardware information from the hardware inventory cache on the system.

To use the hardware discovery process, ensure that you meet the following prerequisites and conditions:

• Available processing capability: The hardware discovery process requires a minimum .5 processor be available for it to use.
• Memory capability: The hardware discovery process requires a minimum of 256 MB of free memory for it to use.
• Partition state: To maximize the information that the hardware discovery process can capture, partitions on the managed server need to be inactive. If a partition is active, the hardware discovery process retrieves information about the hardware assigned to the inactive partition from the hardware inventory cache on the managed system.

Note: Hardware discovery does not require the use of RMC.

Using system plans

You can use the new system plan in the following ways:

• You can create a system plan as a means of capturing up-to-date system documentation. The system plan provides a record of the hardware and partition configuration of the managed system at a given time.
• You can use a system plan that you create for system documentation as part of your disaster recovery planning. You can export the system-plan file to an off site location or to removable media for off site storage so that you have the system documentation that you need available to you if you must recover a managed system.
• You can use system plans as audit records to track system resources for accounting and accountability purposes by exporting the information in them to a basic spreadsheet.
• You can use system plans to help you plan new workloads that require additional system and hardware resources. You can use a system plan, along with appropriate capacity planning information, to make decisions about whether your current system can handle a new workload.
• You can deploy a system plan that you create on one system that an HMC manages to other systems that this HMC manages with identical hardware to the hardware in the system plan.
• You can export a system plan from one HMC to another HMC and use it to deploy the system plan to other systems the target HMC manages with identical hardware to the the hardware in the system plan.
• You can take a system plan that you create by using the HMC and convert it for use in the System Planning Tool (SPT).

Select one of the following topics to learn more about using this page:

Managed system

System plan name

Plan description

Retrieve inactive and unallocated hardware resources

View system plan after creation