[Raricoza]

OK, Hello to you all, this is my first post, and I just wanted to say Hi.

Now, I'm a serious newling to the worls of pSeries/Power 5/system p5 etc, but have had some experience on the AS/400 and iSeries/i5 etc.

To give you some sort of clue, out company got a new AIX box, (System p5) and gave it to me to set up and install. I opened it up, put it in place, and then thought "Where's the VGA port?"

I decided RTFM was the way to go. I struggled to get a connection to the ASMI (I am NOT using a HMC, just ethernet) but got there (With the help of you guys and the Oracle Google) and managed to get this server on our local network.

The IBM manual says I should be able to connect to "h t t p s : / / host name. domain name" (I set those in ASMI --> Network Services --> Network Configuration) but I can't connect. I can get to the ASMI if I specify the IP I set the machine, but not the host/domain name. Is this a serious problem?

Secondly, I need to install AIX 5.3 on this box, and am wondering to myself "Where do I plug in the VGA Cable?" How do you get a screen display in order to install this. 100's of publib documents later, I know you need to press 5 on boot etc, but HOW? All I can see is that the ASMI is for maintenance of the box, or am I missing something?

So please help out a seriously lost soul in at least being able to see something happening on his shiny, but very paperweight-like System p5.

[moralebr]

Raricoza,

p5 systems management is based on Hardware Management Console.

Before any job, you need it up and running.

You only access ASMI through HMC. To access HMC, you need to follow these steps:

1. Guarantee the HMC is up and running;
2. You MUST access HMC through network;
3. Install WebSM ( http : // <HMC IP> / remote_client.html )

You need more help reading the following documentations:

- IBM Redbooks | IBM eServer Certification Study Guide eServer p5 and pSeries Enterprise Technical Support AIX 5L V5.3
- IBM Redbooks | IBM Certification Study Guide eServer p5 and pSeries Administration and Support for AIX 5L Version 5.3

Regards,
Luciano Martins.

[dmbcjk]

My suggestion, use an ASCII monitor to set up the O/S. You won't be able to set up LPAR's or anything, but you should be able to install the O/S. If that does not work, you can install a GTX video card, the IBM feature code is 1980. Having said all of this, I really would look into purchasing an HMC. They are not super expensive, and they are great at system management and perfect for setting up LPARS. If you want a sample quote for an HMC, I would be happy to provide.Good luck.

[cdelgadop]

Hi

Well, ASMI let you create a connection to the internal Firmware of your server in order to configure anything but the proper install of the OS AIX/LINUX. Are you planning to use that p5 as a full system partition machine ??, i mean, only one OS running with no Logical Partitioning nor virtualization ??, if so, then you can get one Dumb Terminal (IBM 3151 as example), connect it to the serial port S0 of your p5 and turn it on, it should ask to select this terminal as console, and then install from this.

Best solution is to buy an HMC station to admin all your p5 servers (believe me, once you get the first you will buy more).

Hope this helps

[tcm8311]

Originally Posted by moralebr

p5 systems management is based on Hardware Management Console.
You only access ASMI through HMC. To access HMC, you need to follow these steps:

1. Guarantee the HMC is up and running;
2. You MUST access HMC through network;
3. Install WebSM ( http : // <HMC IP> / remote_client.html )

You say ASMI can be accessed through the HMC, but can that be accomplished from remote (websm on the hmc), or must you be at the HMC console to run a web browser? I'm not seeing anywhere through websm to access asmi menus.

[duke900ssd]

Raricoza
Welcome to the pSeries club, may your stay be a long, happy and painless one.
You will need to either connect a dumb terminal (like a pc runing windows hyperterminal) to the serial port or you will need to get a VGA adapter, monitor, keyboard and mouse to install AIX.
As for accessing the ASMI via the https://... how is your browser going to resolve the hostname you have set on the ASMI? did you add it to the hosts file, DNS, etc?
If you know the IP address then this should not be a serious problem for you.

moralebr
A HMC is not required if you only want to run one instance of AIX or you are using IVM to support your LPARS.
2. you do not need to access the HMC through the network, that is why it has a console.
3. V7 of the HMC code does not use remote WebSM any more it has an http interface for remote access.

dmbcjk
Good advice, but don't forget you can use LPARs without an HMC if you have IVM.

cdelgadop
Good advice, once you have a partitioned p5 up and running you'll want more and they are half the price of i5.

tcm8311
Thread Hijack, start your own thread.
HMC code V7 supports ASMI access through the remote HTTP connection but it just spawns another web browser for you to access the ASMI via http.
HTH.

[ross.mather]

Only one comment to add to the already good advice, using http://hostname.domainname will only work if the hostname is registered somehow at the client end (either in your DNS or in your local hosts file).

I know you don't have an HMC right now - so access to the server will be via a serial console to the server, but strongly consider getting (ie talk your boss into buying) an HMC - they are worth their weight in gold as they are your passport to LPARs and all that really cool stuff.

Not only that but it means never having to go to the computer room to reboot a server :-).

[gregscott]

I've been reading this thread with great interest. I have a similar challenge - I need to configure hardware RAID and install AIX from bare metal.

The system I have is a machine type 9131-52A - I think it's a P5 520. I think this is a generation old. It has an internal RAID enablement card and 5 hot swapable SCSI disks in the I/O cage facing the front panel. At least I think they're hot swappable. I suppose I should pop off the top cover and see what it has for internal disks. The RAID card slides in underneath the I/O cage with the hot swappable drives.

I also have no HMC. The server does have a VGA connector, but no video comes out. It also has a couple of USB connectors, probably for a keyboard and mouse. I finally figured out I'm supposed to connect a laptop to the network connection on the HMC1 port and go to (sheesh, the forum won't allow me to put in the URL with the default IP Address).

OK, wonderful, now I have a console - well, sort of. Well, not really....
This must be a service processor because it works when the system is plugged in but turned off. I was hoping this browser interface would give me the abilty to configure hardware RAID and other console stuff, but I noticed it doesn't really give me anything useful - although I can look at a few parameters I don't care about for now. And the parameters it lets me look at are different when powered on versus powered off.

Like I said, almost a console - so close I can taste it.

btw, If the HMC also connects to this port, then there must be some software on that service processor that listens and responds to HMC client commands somehow. Too bad I don't have a way to get at any of this stuff without a real HMC.

From reading this and other threads, it looks like I need to do these steps to get this thing up and running from bare metal:

1: Hook up the serial console. This has a weird cable with some funky pinouts. But I should be able to find the right combo that works with the serial port and terminal emulator on my laptop. According to "Managing the Advanced System Management Interface (ASMI)", it looks like the setup should be 19200, 8 bits, no parity, 1 stop bit.

2: Figure out how to interact with the serial console, power up the server, and boot from the diagnostic CD that came with it.

3: The diagnostic CD will hopefully have some stuff that will let me lash those disks together in the RAID configuration I want.

4: After that's done, put in the AIX CD, boot from it and install AIX. (Realizing it's just the base AIX, no virtualization or any of the cool stuff.)

Am I on the right track?

thanks
- Greg Scott
(Another p series rookie)

[duke900ssd]

Hi gregscott,

You posted: "I've been reading this thread with great interest."

You have obviously not read either the forum rules or this thread carefully enough or you would not have hijacked this thread.

Please post your own thread for your problem.

[gregscott]

> You have obviously not read either the forum rules or this thread carefully > enough or you would not have hijacked this thread.

>Please post your own thread for your problem.

Dude, it's the same exact issue. Different time, different place, same issue. We are both configuring P Series systems from bare metal. There are already at least 3 threads in this forum discussing the same issue. I didn't see any sense in starting yet another one. But if you want, I will be happy to start off yet another thread.

- Greg Scott