Some great new features with this release. One of the major issues I have when creating new LPARs is the fact that we can’t get the WWNs from HBAs up front for the storage team before the LPARs are loaded with AIX. If we’re lucky and do an entire system inventory before going live, we can sorta guess as to what the WWN would be. I’m currently installing the new code, so I cannot confirm if this is actually useful at this point or not, but I’m hoping for the best.

From the readme

*Provides HMC users more detailed view of slot contents including child devices.
*Allows administrators to view Ethernet MAC addresses and FibreChannel WWN’s from the HMC before partitions are configured
*Ability to create multiple virtual processor pools, providing easier license management by capping the number of processor cycles that can be consumed by a group of uncapped logical partitions.
*Partition mobility - a new HMC function, on systems that are capable to use this function, that enables moving a partition from one managed system to another. The active partition mobility function provides the HMC administrator the ability to non-disruptively move a running partition, with its operating system and applications, profiles, and virtualized resources, across two capable and compatible servers that are under the control of the same HMC. The inactive partition mobility function provides the ability to move an inactive, powered-off partition, with its profiles and virtualized resources, across two servers that are under the control of the same HMC.

I believe the ability to create other virtual processor pools was for power6 only, since most of that is hypervisor based. This will also be very useful due to licensing issues that I come across here and there. There’s also a huge list of fixes for v7 UI in general, probably still bugs from going from Java Webstart  to the browser based interface.

I’m definitely looking forward to this installation to complete!

Also just to mention, there is fix MH01062 for 3.2.0 out as well.
This is available on the download page.

I had a problem over the weekend with a server and the ip_conntrack table being filled up. This started off Friday night very slowly, I was getting paged on and off for disconects/reconnects from my Nagios box. I thought it was the network bouncing at the colo, but it turned out the box just had a higher than usual volume of Internet traffic. The limit I had initially set was at 4096. I ended up raising this to 32768 so it doesn’t happen again. I guess the server hasn’t ever seen that much traffic before, so 4096 worked out good for a while. I’ll see what happens now with the limit set to 32k.

Nov 23 14:23:06 host printk: 24 messages suppressed.
Nov 23 14:23:06 host ip_conntrack: table full, dropping packet.
Nov 23 14:23:11 host printk: 41 messages suppressed.
Nov 23 14:23:11 host ip_conntrack: table full, dropping packet.
Nov 23 14:23:16 host printk: 29 messages suppressed.
Nov 23 14:23:16 host ip_conntrack: table full, dropping packet.
Nov 23 14:23:22 host printk: 12 messages suppressed.
Nov 23 14:23:22 host ip_conntrack: table full, dropping packet.
Nov 23 14:23:26 host printk: 33 messages suppressed.
Nov 23 14:23:26 host ip_conntrack: table full, dropping packet.
Nov 23 14:23:32 host printk: 12 messages suppressed.
Nov 23 14:23:32 host ip_conntrack: table full, dropping packet.
Nov 23 14:23:36 host printk: 14 messages suppressed.

From earlier today, back to normal:

# wc -l ip_conntrack
1716 ip_conntrack
# wc -l ip_conntrack
1717 ip_conntrack

# cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_conntrack_max
32768

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247431.html?Open

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/abstracts/sg247559.html?Open

Here’s some interesting docs on IBMs new Power6 processor.

IBM POWER6 Microprocessor Technology

Virtual I/O Server 1.5.0.1

Sweet. New features include file backed virtual SCSI devices. Sorta like Xen file backed devices. I wonder if you can now scp the fbd around to another frame, reconfigure, then boot it back up? Sounds cool, although I probably won’t have a use anytime soon for file backed devices. We generally use entire physical disks for prod rootvg<73Gx2> and EMC LUNs for beta LPARs<single device through two VIOS>… OR in very rare instances<lab>, LVM volumes.

Partition mobility updates are also included within this release. I’m assuming since HMC V7 enabled Partition Mobility as far as LPARs go, this is just an update for VIOS to support it.

There’s also now an expansion pack available. A quick glimpse makes it look like it’s primarily additional security/auth features.

This is a great redbook that covers the new HMC v7 features. It’s a great doc to check out if you’re planning on migrating from 6 to 7 anytime soon!

HMC Management Console V7 Handbook

Pretty useful link for VIOS commands

Virtual I/O Server Commands Reference

AIX 6.1 is the latest release of IBMs popular Unix operating system. There are a few major changes within the OS, and a lot of new features.

• Binary compatibility with AIX V5, 32 and 64 bit apps.
• AIX 6.1 Supports Power4, Power5, Power6, PowerPC 970 processors.
• AIX 6.1 will NOT have a 32 bit kernel, 64 bit only!
• Upgrade from AIX V4 or V5.
• Power6 features including Live Partition Mobility, Multiple Shared Processing Pools, and Application Storage Keys. These features are also available in AIX 5.3 with Power6.
• Workload Partitions. WPARs are similar to Solaris Containers. The main differences are that AIX supports both Application WPARs and System WPARs, and allowing for WPAR Mobility. Live WPARs can be migrated between systems. IMO, WPARs are much more useful than Solaris Containers, and a lot easier to figure out. The resource management within the WPARs is also user friendly and easy to figure out for the first time users. WPARs require AIX 6.1 only, does not require Power6.
• WPAR Manager. Web based WPAR management tool is smooth and easy to use. You can also manage WPARs via smith and CLI.
• Enhanced RBAC, complete re-write of existing RBAC architecture.
• Secure by Default install option. Install a minimal version of AIX. Sorta like a Gentoo live cd.
• Concurrent kernel updates
• Encrypted filesystems using JFS2
• Dynamic tracing via Probevue

More to come.