Edit: Does anyone use this?
Originally posted January 19, 2016 on AIXchange
After trying out the HMC virtual appliance (vHMC), I wanted to examine the myHMC mobile application. The app, which came out last summer, is designed to allow you to manage HMC devices from your phone.
For more, watch this video, and read Appendix A from this IBM Redbook.
myHMC is an Android or iOS application that lets you connect to and monitor managed objects on your Power systems Hardware Management Console (HMC). Monitoring includes the status of your Managed Systems, Logical Partitions/Virtual Machines and VIO servers. The application also allows you to view Resource Groups, Serviceable Events and Performance Data.
Since I have an Android phone, I downloaded the app from Google Play. Apple users can download an iOS version from iTunes.
Once you install myHMC there is a built in demo HMC inside the app for you to play with, though if you have the proper network connectivity and user ID and password information, you should be able to connect it to your own HMC.
I went ahead and connected the myHMC app on my phone to the vHMC running in VMware on my local network — although obviously I’d need to VPN in or have my mobile device connected to a corporate network in order to use it there. It’s a minimal interface, but it does provide a useful read-only view of HMC information.
You can see your managed systems, VIO servers, logical partitions and resource groups in the Resources section of the app. The errors and notifications section displays your serviceable events, and allows you to drill down for details about events and errors. The more information section provides the HMC serial number, machine type, HMC code version and build level.
A dashboard view displays the HMCs that are online, the attention LEDs, the events and the status of managed systems — including whether they’re powered on, operating, initializing or in standby mode. In the logical partitions view, the options are not-activated, running, suspended, open firmware and migrating running.
Under settings, you can find information such as how to use this app, release notes and open source licenses. How to use this app brings you to six pages of information, including screen shots that help you understand how to navigate (although it’s fairly self-explanatory once you try it out). You’re told you can switch between your HMCs and your dashboard view. Use the + key to add an HMC (obviously you’d first need to set up the HMC to allow remote connections and remote operation just like you would normally set up to allow remote access to your HMC). Individual HMCs can be edited or deleted by holding the corresponding icon, while application settings are available from the overflow menu icon. To send the developers feedback about the application, simply shake your phone while the app is running.
Again, all of the information in the application is read-only. At least I didn’t see any way to modify anything on my HMC from the application. Perhaps you found something that I’ve overlooked? Be sure to let me know what you find as you use the app.
What do you think? Do you have the connectivity you need into your data center to make this application useful to you?