Tweaks To The Power Software Stack, And Red Hat Gets Easier
April 12, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan
Whenever there are Technology Refreshes for the IBM i operating system, its database, and the related systems and development tools for IBM i, you can bet Elon Musk’s last dollar that there will also be nips and tucks, and sometimes more significant changes, to the adjunct software that runs on Power Systems iron. Such as the PowerVM server virtualization hypervisor, the PowerVC implementation of the OpenStack cloud controller, the PowerSC security tools, and other things.
And indeed, as part of the April 11 announcements, IBM has tweaked this Power Systems stuff. This is not one of the big ones, as you will clearly see in announcement letter 223-083, you will see that these programs as well as the virtual Hardware Management Console (vHMC), the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS), and the Cloud Management Console (CMC) were all updated to work in concert with Power10 machines running the latest releases of IBM i, AIX, and Linux. Here is the rundown:
First, there is PowerVM 3.1.4:
- PowerVM VIOS Service Pack (SP) updates: VIOS 3.1.2.50 SP, VIOS 3.1.3.30 SP, and VIOS 3.1.4.21 SP.
- Support for NED24 NVM-Express Expansion Drawer (#ESR0), which requires firmware level FW1040, or later. Note that assignment of #ESR0 to VIOS requires VIOS 3.1.4.21, or later.
- Support for NovaLink 2.1.1: Platform KeyStore, including secure storage for partitions to protect sensitive information.
Second, there is vHMC V10R2M1040 (boy, that’s a throwback to the old way of doing versioning on the OS/400 platform):
- Adds support for firmware levels FW1030.20 and FW1040
- Support for NED24 NVM-Express Expansion Drawer (#ESR0), which requires firmware level FW1040, or later
- Enhanced security for HMC certificates with options for better effective strength
- Usability enhancements with dashboard and upgraded HMC user interface
Third, there is PowerVC 2.1.1 and PowerVC for Private Cloud 2.1.1:
- Usability enhancements, including help panel and error message improvements
- Pure Storage Purity ActiveCluster support
- Concurrent maintenance for simplified upgrades
And fourth, there is CMC 1.19:
- Enhanced with additional options for core and memory usage visualization for IBM Power Private Cloud Solution with Dynamic Capacity, which was previously known as IBM Power Enterprise Pools 2.0
- Additional data filters for the CMC to address customer requirements
- Performance and scale optimizations
You will note that what was once called Power Enterprise Pools 2.0 is now known as Power Private Cloud Solution with Dynamic Capacity. It is not clear to me if Enterprise Pools always required OpenStack, but it sure looks like it based on the naming that Big Blue is using.
The vHMC updates will be available on May 19, but the other tweaks to the Power Systems stack will be available on April 28.
One last thing. It looks like IBM is inching towards making Red Hat Enterprise Linux more of a peer to IBM i and AIX on Power Systems. In announcement letter 223-075, we find that “IBM and Red Hat have collaborated to make RHEL orderable on IBM Power technology-based servers” starting on April 14. All I can say is, how come this wasn’t done years ago? IBM has tried to keep an arm’s length approach to running Red Hat, but making RHEL (and therefore OpenShift and OpenStack) directly orderable on a Power Systems machine as it is being configured seems to be dead obvious. Other server makers can do it, and do. The System x division at IBM used to do it, too. Go figure, but now you can do it as part of your Power10 deal.
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