Mt Xia: Technical Consulting Group

Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery / High Availability
Data Center Automation / Audit Response / Audit Compliance

Additional documents of interest

  • Successful Business Continuity - Part 1 - Users and Groups
    This article was published in the April 2005 issue of AIX Update magazine and discusses system administration needs and requirements oriented around users and groups. The overall emphasis of this series of articles is for implementation of enterprise wide unique identifiers for a variety of parameters, such as user names, group names, UID and GID numbers.
  • Successful Business Continuity - Part 2 - Machine and Host Names
    This article was published in the May 2005 issue of AIX Update magazine and discusses naming structures for machines, systems, adapters, and aliases. The overall emphasis of this series of articles is for implementation of enterprise wide unique identifiers for a variety of parameters.
  • Successful Business Continuity - Part 3 - Volume Names
    This article was published in the December 2005 issue of AIX Update magazine and discusses naming structures for volume groups, logical volumes, log logical volumes, directory mount points, etc. The overall emphasis of this series of articles is for implementation of enterprise wide unique identifiers for a variety of parameters.
  • Successful Business Continuity - Part 4 - MQ Series, Startup/Shutdown Scripts, Error Processing
    This article was published in the April 2006 issue of AIX Update magazine and discusses how to implement AIX in an environment dedicated to business continuity. The topic of this article is the assignment of MQ Series queue names and aliases, resource group startup and shutdown script names (Application startup/shutdown script names), error logging, and error notification.
  • Successful Business Continuity - Part 5 - Miscellaneous topics
    This article was published in the August 2006 issue of AIX Update magazine and discusses how to implement AIX in an environment dedicated to business continuity. A variety of topics is discussed in this article including automated documentation generation and management.
  • Automated Microcode Management System
    One of the most difficult administration tasks in an AIX environment is attempting to keep the firmware and microcode up-to-date. Mt Xia has devised an automated method of gathering the Microcode information, determining which microcode needs to be updated, generating reports, and uploading the required microcode updates to each individual system.
  • Calculating the size of a Virtual Processor
    This document describes the algorithms used to calculate the size of a virtual processor when using shared processors in an LPAR. The IBM documentation describes how to calculate CPU utilization, NOT how to size for configuration, this document clarifies this process. A description of the HMC input fields for the processor tab is included.
  • Basics of Partition Load Manager Setup
    This presentation was provided by Ron Barker from IBM regarding the PLM Basic setup.
  • ppt
  • pdf
  • Microcode Management

    Systems without an HMC

    Use IBM's Microcode Discovery Service at the following URL to determine what microcode should be updated, to retrieve the microcode, and the instructions for installing the microcode.

    https://techsupport.services.ibm.com/server/aix.invscoutMDS

    Normally the "java applet" is used to peform the microcode discovery which requires the password for the user "invscout" to be set. This also requires internet communication from the system over port 808. To use the java applet perform the following steps on the target system:

    1. Set the password for the user "invscout"
    2. passwd invscout
      

    3. Clear the password administration flags on the user "invscout"

      pwdadm -c invscout
      

    4. Start the "invscout" daemon

      invscoutd
      

    5. The system is now ready for microcode discovery via the java applet
    6. The microcode discovery service will require several pieces of information to be able to perform the survey:

      • Fully qualified hostname of the system
      • Password for the user "invscout"
      • Port number (default: 808)
      • System Model Number

        lsattr -El sys0 -a modelname -F value
        

      • System Serial Number

        lsattr -El sys0 -a systemid -F value
        

    Systems with an HMC

    Use the facilities built into the HMC for performing microcode updates to all managed systems.

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    Standards
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    Policies
    Guidelines
    Procedures


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