Edit: Did anyone ever run this?
Originally posted April 26, 2011 on AIXchange
The IBM Redbook covering the IBM Service Director Management Console (SDMC) is now available. Whether you’re making the move from the HMC to the SDMC now or later, this publication will help you with your transition. It’s well worth the download.
The first time I read it, I learned interesting things like:
* “The SDMC is available as a software and a hardware appliance. The software appliance will replace the Integrated Virtualization Manager, and can manage machines from the blades up to the 750 class servers. The hardware appliance is required for management of midrange systems and high-end systems. The SDMC releases can be used alongside the Hardware Management Console during trials and deployment, which eases transition.”
* “The SDMC virtual machine contains Linux as the base operating system. For the software appliance, the client supplied virtualization options for different hypervisors include Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization KVM or VMware ESX/ESXi.”
* Section 1.5 shows us how the terminology will evolve. Managed systems are now called servers, frames are power units, LPARs are virtual servers, the hscroot ID becomes the sysadmin ID, partition mobility becomes relocation, etc.
* “The SDMC incorporates most functions of the Hardware Management Console. This has been done through direct mapping of commands or by replacing functions that are present already in IBM Systems Director. Some functions are not available in the first release of the SDMC, notably the ability to handle system plans.”
Comment: As system plans are wonderful tools that I highly recommend, hopefully this will be fixed very quickly. From what I understand this will be addressed in one of the early service packs.
* “The command-line interface has been mostly kept the same. On the SDMC, most of the commands are just preceded by smcli. This new prefix might require changes to existing scripts that use the Hardware Management Console.”
* “SDMC provides the capability to back up the whole virtual machine onto removable media or a remote FTP server. You can restore using the backup file from the removable media or from a remote FTP server. The restore will be full image deployment and all existing files will be replaced from the backup. Unlike the HMC, SDMC backs up the entire disk instead of individual files. The backup function requires that the SDMC be temporarily shut down to quiesce the disks, but it will be immediately restarted while the disk files are copied to removable media or a remote FTP server. The restore function takes under an hour to complete.”
The SDMC has been a topic of discussion at workshops and IBM Technical University conference, so hopefully most customers are up on this change. It shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Basically, the SDMC is still an appliance just like the HMC is today. It will run Systems Director code under the covers. The hardware will be the same CR6 that we’re used to, but SDMC will require more memory and disk space. There will be two 500 GB disks running in a RAID0 setup, so be sure to backup the SDMC; these disks will not be mirrored. Although I’ve heard that existing CR6 machines will ultimately be upgradeable, at GA the machines will be net new. So initially, it will probably make sense to run the HMC and SDMC simultaneously until you get used to the SDMC’s new capabilities.
Those new capabilities are impressive. The SDMC will be able to manage the whole POWER6 and POWER7 lineup, including blade systems. This is a much nicer alternative than the current solution of using and managing each individual blade via IVM. It’s a pain to use the GUI and deal with the frequent timeouts that occur when using the IVM interface. Assuming you have sufficient resources, another thing you’ll be able to do with the SDMC that can’t be done with IVM is create dual VIO servers on your blades.
Finally, the SDMC will support the capability to run live partition mobility operations between blades and standalone servers and back again. This will give customers greater flexibility as far as purchasing hardware and running workloads. With this forgiving infrastructure you’ll be able to move workloads around on the fly, and with dynamic logical partition operations you’ll be able to adjust hardware allocations on the fly.
The SDMC transition will not be a big bang change from the HMC, but it will take some time. The rollout, in fact, is expected to take years. As is standard practice for IBM when introducing updated solutions, the HMC will continue to be supported through this transition, but over time advanced virtualization capabilities will increasingly be brought to the SDMC (and not necessarily the HMC). Customers are encouraged to try out the SDMC, make a transition plan, run it alongside the HMC and get used to it.
As noted, there is a strong thread between the two solutions. The SDMC, like the HMC, is an appliance with user management capabilities and a built-in firewall. The network topology is identical on both solutions. As with the HMC, the SDMC won’t allow admins root access or the capability install software. Just as larger environments have multiple HMCs now, you’ll be able to run multiple SDMCs. You’ll still need an additional Systems Director server to manage your SDMC stand-alone devices and take advantage of advanced plugins like Active Energy Manager or VMControl.
SDMC availability is planned for May 13.
So what do you think of this change? When do you expect to see an SDMC in your environment?