Edit: Some links no longer work.
Originally posted June 6, 2017 on AIXchange
What sort of person actually enjoys reading through random IBM support documentation? A lot of us, I imagine. I know I do. I find reading docs in my spare time helps me when I’m actually dealing with a problem. I’ll remember reading something, and even if I don’t recall where I saw it, I can usually locate it with minimal digging.
I frequently browse IBM Techdocs. I’ll search on “aix” or “hmc” for example, and change the any time field to something fairly current. You never know what might pop up.
For example, I recently read this document about initiating a resource dump from the HMC. It wasn’t anything I needed to do at that moment, but if I ever do run into this issue, I will know where to look and I know I’ll feel comfortable with the procedure as it won’t be coming from out of the blue. To me it feels like refreshing my memory as opposed to learning a new concept.
The document offers some introductory information, and then goes through the various steps you would take:
The Resource Dump function can be used to generate Power Hypervisor Resource Dumps, Partition Firmware Dumps, SR-IOV Dumps, and Power Hypervisor Macro Resource Dumps….
A non-disruptive Hypervisor Resource Dump, initiated using selector system or the default blank selector, generates a SYSDUMP dump file. This can take an extended amount of time to complete. The dump status will show ‘In Progress’ until it completes. If IBM Support did not specify a selector, then this is the desired dump type.
Toward the end you can see how to do the same thing from the HMC command line:
Alternatively, these dump types may be initiated from the HMC command line, using:
startdump -m {managed server} -t resource -r “{resource selector}”
Example 1: startdump -m 9119-MME*21ABCDE -t resource -r “system”
would generate a non-disruptive Hypervisor Resource Dump, SYSDUMP type, for server 9119-MME*21ABCDE”
Finally, there’s an option to send the dump into IBM for analysis. Read this for details:
This document describes how to retrieve and send an existing server dump to IBM support using HMC Version 7 and HMC Version 8 (classic or enhanced) user interface. Dump types include any server dump such as FSP dumps (FSPDUMP), system or platform dumps (SYSDUMP), power dumps (PWRDUMP), resource dumps (RSCDUMP), and logical partition adjunct dumps (LPADUMP).
Be sure to read the whole thing. There’s additional information that I haven’t presented here.
Perusing documents from time to time is a simple way to expand your knowledge base. And I do enjoy it, because I never know what will turn up, or when I might need it.