Edit: I am looking forward to the next half marathon at Lake Powell
Originally published by TechChannel November 29, 2021
Dynamic LPAR is now available for SAP HANA databases. Get details on this, along with updated Power10 and AIX 7.3 documentation and more from IBM Champion Rob McNelly.
Dynamic LPAR is now available for SAP HANA databases.
The new capabilities allow HANA admins to adjust memory on active LPARs without shutting down partitions. This tweet has more information,including an important reminder about the potential need to run dynamic platform optimizer (DPO) should you experience performance degradation.
This is just another reason to consider running SAP HANA on Power Systems servers if you aren’t already.
“With IBM POWER9 processors and IBM PowerVM, Power Systems can host up to 16 production SAP HANA databases on a single server. You can granularly allocate memory and cores across SAP HANA instances to meet precise capacity needs. Support for shared processor pools lets you dynamically distribute compute capacity across SAP environments, reducing total cost of ownership (TCO). On-demand workload scaling allows you to quickly and easily add more cores and memory to SAP HANA workloads—without configuration recertification by SAP.
“This flexible solution allows you to run both SAP and non-SAP applications—including transactional, analytical, memory-intensive, and I/O-intensive workloads—on a single platform. You can also run legacy SAP applications alongside SAP S/4HANA workloads and migrate at your own pace. Flexible resource allocation lets you support short-term, long-term, and shifting demand.”
Service and Support Best Practices Docs Updated
Chris Gibson shared this link, which lists numerous documents that recommend service and support strategies for IBM systems and software. Recently updated AIX docs include Power10 Performance Best Practices and POWER9 Performance Best Practices. Scroll down to the hardware and firmware section and you’ll find the POWER8, POWER9 and Power10 system firmware release planned schedule, which was also just updated.
Note: These brief checklists and docs should not be confused with the much more comprehensive Power Implementation Quality Standard document that was just updated to version 2.5. The newly updated pages are clearly marked as you make your way through the presentation.
AIX 7.3: A Technical Review
Chris also let me know about the Singapore AIX/IBM i/Linux on Power Meetup Group. The next monthly meeting is Nov. 26. He and Anthony Steel will discuss new features in AIX 7.3 (as well as 7.2). The presentation will last about an hour. A Q&A session will follow.
If you’re coming by this information after the fact, check out the meeting archives.
Power10 Presentations and Videos
Speaking of user groups, and the latest announcement information, some interesting replays are available. The UK-based Power VUG Technical Webinar Series hosted these recent presentations:
- Session 110: PowerVM features in Power10 systems and HMC V10, CMC, Enterprise Pools 2.0 Enhancements
- Session 109: Green is easy, with IBM Power—how Power10 contributes to your Sustainability journey, while saving cost at the same time
And check out these Power Systems Virtual User Group webcast replays:
- AIX 7.3 Announce with Maria Ward, Carl Burnett & Brian Veale (presentation and video replay)
- IBM Power10 Announce with William Starke & Joe Armstrong (Power10 processor presentation, Power E1080 presentation and video replay)
Cool Twitter-Adjacent Stuff
On Twitter, Kiran Tripathi cites options for capturing and exporting VM instances, here.
“You can capture and export an AIX or IBM i VM instance by using the Power Systems Virtual Server user interface or CLI. A VM is captured as a volume backed image. The image is stored in new volumes on the storage providers. An image can be exported to an IBM Cloud Object Storage (Cloud Object Storage) bucket. When an image is exported, the volumes of the image are copied and packaged in an Open Virtualization Appliance (OVA) file. The OVA file is compressed by using gzip before it gets uploaded to the IBM Cloud Object Storage bucket.
“When you capture and export a VM, you can choose the image catalog, COS, or both as destinations. The image catalog resides on the IBM Power storage area network (SAN). IBM’s COS is encrypted and dispersed across multiple geographic locations, and accessed over HTTP by using a REST API. This service uses the distributed storage technologies that are provided by the IBM COS System (formerly Cleversafe). You can always export your image in your image catalog to COS at a later point. You can also deploy the captured image to create a clone of the VM by using a different network configuration.”
In a post on LinkedIn, Chris Peterson explains how AIX APIs can be used to explore user password histories:
“This one is a bit specialized and not something everyone should meddle with. Of course, your code has to run as root in order to query this “database” in the first place, so all’s fair in love and business.
…
“I was extremely pleased by the announcement that AIX’s next release will default to a much better password hashing algorithm than crypt() that allows for longer passwords! Huzzah!
…
“Yet another—mostly documented—API that sets AIX apart from some of the “competition.” If you know what to look for and have an idea where to look, you’re almost guaranteed to find ways to make AIX one of the most secure and auditable platforms anywhere.”
Tell Yourself You Can, and You Will
When I heard that a friend was going to run a half marathon, my first thought was: “There’s no way I could do that.”
But the thing is, I’m an experienced runner. I love running. Sure I’d never run that distance before, but was it really that difficult? I decided to find out. One day I extended one of my regular runs to see how far I could get. A half marathon is 13.1 miles; I ended up covering 14 miles with relative ease. So yes, I realized, I can run a half marathon—and I did just that at the recent event at Lake Powell in northern Arizona.
If you tell yourself you can’t, you’ll be right. But if you tell yourself you can, you’ll also be right. It may take time, effort and practice. You may fail once or multiple times when trying something new, but that’s OK. You’ll most certainly fail if you don’t try. It’s far better to fail at something than succeed at nothing.