>>> On 10/3/2016 at 03:21 PM, John McKown <[email protected]> wrote: > Apparently it is possible (have never done) to IPL an LPAR from the DVD on > the HMC.
I have, but until recently it wasn't possible for the DVD to be accessible by Linux. > Of course, the problem with this, at least in a remote situation, > is that somebody needs to insert the correct DVD into the HMC's DVD drive. Yes, it's a bit of a pain. As always, it pays to have friends in certain places. > The current HMCs, as I understand it, run Linux as the OS. That has been true for a very long time. So much so that Connor was surprised to find out that his z890 SE was running OS2. > I have often > booted virtual machines on a hypervisor on Linux/Intel. Wouldn't it be neat > if you could write an ISO image of a DVD into a directory on the HMC so > that you could then IPL from it. Even better would be if said writing to > the ISO image were controlled from the HMC so that the image is placed into > a specific directory, perhaps with a description, and that you could IPL > the LPAR by selecting the ISO image from a list of ISO images with their > description. This has been a requirement of mine for quite a while now, but only recently became feasible with Linux being able to access the DVD. > If you want really weird, how about the ability to direct the > HMC to download an ISO image (and validate it) from an IBM site such as > ShopzSeries so you wouldn't need a DVD at all. My preference would be that I have the ability to upload multiple ISO images from a remote location, with appropriate access controls as to source, etc. If download from the HMC was also added, I wouldn't mind. Getting your network security team to allow outbound http[s] connections from the HMC might be a bit problematic, shall we say. > IIRC, you can install z/VM via DVD (no tapes) That is correct. If you know the right incantation, you can also have z/VM's FTP server make the contents of the DVD reader available to the network as well. > so wouldn't be nice to have the HMC be able to download > an ISO image which you could then IPL to install z/VM. I am also under the > impression that, for a fee, you can also get a z/OS DVD image in order to > install z/OS. I don't know if you can do this for Linux or not. I also > don't know about z/VSE and z/TPF. Beginning with SLES12 SP2 (coming soon to a CDN server near you) we will support installation from the DVD reader in the HMC. As things stand now, that means a real DVD in the reader, of course. Speed, however, is a drawback. The bandwidth between the DVD reader and the LPAR is (an) order(s) of magnitude slower than a network-based installation server. I don't know if that changed with either the z13 or z13s. If not, I'm hoping that multiple IBM customers sign on to a requirement to improve it. Mark Post ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
