Hardware Management Console Overview

What is Hardware Management Console (HMC)?

The HMC is a server or stand alone machine that provides a graphical user interface tool to manage several Power Systems. The HMC manages system through hypervisor and operating system. From version 7 it is truly web based and you can configure, installs and manage, partitioned, virtualization most of your Power5 and 6 boxes via HMC. There are many tasks you can do with HMC, such as,

• Powering off and on of the partition
• Configure and activate resources to the system
• Creates and stores LPAR profiles and allocated resources to them.
• HMC do the dynamic memory reconfiguration of the partition.
• Setup VIO server and VIO client thru HMC and do micro-partition, create storage
• • pool and processor pool with it
  • Provide virtual console to the partition
  Most of the time we installed dual HMC for redundancy and make sure to achieve more uptime in a wide system.
  
  
  Why do I need a Hardware Management Console, anyway?
  
  
  You need a HMC if you plan to:
  – Configure and manage logical partitions and partition profiles (selected models can configure LINUX partitions without a HMC).
  – Perform DLPAR (dynamic LPAR) functions.
  – Activate and manage Capacity on Demand resources.
  You can also use the HMC to:
  – Perform service functions
  – Manage frames (towers), IOPs and IOAs. * Note that you cannot see below the IOA to the device level.
  – Manage system profiles (yes, you can have more than one!)
  – Power on and power down. The Service Processor is always hot if there is power to the server.
  – Activate and manage Virtualization Engine technologies.
  – 5250 emulation so you can get a console up on a i5/OS partition or a virtual terminal window for AIX or LINUX.