Admin Alert: Printing and Emailing a System i Rack Config

When requesting new hardware quotes for a System i, iSeries, or AS/400 server, your vendor will most likely ask you for a server rack configuration that was generated on the machine that you are upgrading. To alleviate confusion about this process, this column covers everything concerning rack configurations, including what a rack configuration is, why it’s needed, and how to generate and send a configuration to your vendor.

What’s a Rack Config?

A rack configuration (rack config) is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a listing of all the physical components in the rack (or racks) that host your System i, iSeries, or AS/400 server. A rack config is a physical roadmap to your system. It tells the reader where the system units, system buses, adapters, IOPs, IOAs, disk drives, memory cards, and other components are located in each of your cabinets.

Vendors frequently request a rack config whenever they quote or order new hardware for your system. They do this so that they can determine a few basic items, including:

• Can the hardware fit into your existing rack? For example, if you’re ordering a fiber optic card to connect a new disk drive to your system, is there room in the rack for that card and where can it be installed?
• Are there any pre-requisite hardware components that also need to be installed to make the new item work, such as other adapters, cables, etc.? If you’re ordering hard drives, will they work in the rack’s existing disk configuration or will you need to rearrange or reconsider different disk drive sizes to fit in your system? The rack config tells the vendor about the physical structure of the partition that you’re adding hardware to, so that he can determine what other types of parts might be needed or if any system configuration changes are needed.

Rack configs are also requested when ordering new hardware so that the vendor can see whether any existing components can be used in the new machine, hopefully saving you money in the process. For example, if you just bought new hard drives for an i520 that you’re upgrading to an i550, you may be able to recycle those drives and spare yourself the expense of buying additional storage. A rack config helps the vendor determine which parts can and cannot be migrated to the new machine.

How Many Ways Can We Generate a Rack Config?

Depending on what type of machine you have, there are several different ways to generate a rack config. For partitioned machines, a rack config can be generated for each partition on the box. For non-partitioned machines, there is only one rack config and IBM specifies a different rack configuration generation process than the procedure used for partitioned machines.

For partitioned machines, you can generate a rack configuration by running the System Service Tools command (STRSST) from a green screen and performing the following steps on your partitions.

1. Sign into and bring up the System Service Tools (SST) menu by running the Start System Service Tools (STRSST) command.
2. Sign into SST by using an SST user ID and password that has access privileges to use SST’s Hardware Service Manager feature. If you sign on by using the QSECOFR SST user ID, you will have all the privileges that you need.
3. From the System Service Tools screen, take option 1, Start A Service Tool.
4. On the Start a Service Tool screen, take option 7, Hardware Service Manager.
5. On the Hardware Service Manager screen, press F6=Print Configuration to print the rack config.

For non-partitioned machines, IBM offers a slightly different set of STRSST options. You can find instructions for generating this type of rack configuration by going to IBM’s Website on How To Generate a Rack Configuration for Non-Partitioned iSeries.

If you have an old CISC AS/400 (don’t laugh, there are still some of these floating around out there), you may need to use the following instructions to generate a rack configuration, if the STRSST instructions listed above don’t work for you.

1. On a green-screen command line, run the Work with Hardware Products (WRKHDWPRD) command.
2. Select option 1, Work with Rack Configuration, from the Work with Hardware Products screen.
3. Press F17=Print Rack Configuration to print the rack config.

Getting the Rack Config To Your Vendor

Once printed, the rack config will be contained in a QPCSMPRT spooled file under the user profile that created the listing. The next trick is to send it to the requesting vendor. For that, you generally have the following options:

• You can print and either hand-deliver, mail, or fax the rack configuration to your vendor.
• If you have third-party software for emailing System i reports, such as RJS Software’s Email Report Server or Gumbo Software’s Spoolmail product, you can email the report directly from the system to your vendor.
• If you don’t have email report capabilities on your system, you can use iSeries Navigator (OpsNav) to save the report to a Windows folder and email it to a vendor through your email account.

To save your rack configuration printout to a Windows folder for emailing to a vendor, perform the following steps.

1. Open iSeries Navigator, and expand the Basic Operations→Printer Output node under the system where you created the spooled file. This will bring up the current list of spooled files that were created by your user profile.
2. Locate and right-click on the QPCSMPRT spooled file containing your rack configuration. Select Export from the pop-up menu that appears. Export allows you to save the spooled file information to a Windows text file.
3. After selecting Export, the system will prompt you for the Windows drive location to save the text file to. Once you select the location, it will save the information into a text file named “qpcsmprt.txt”.
4. After the rack configuration file is saved to disk, it can then be included as an attachment in an email to your vendor.

When I tested this process on an i5/OS V5R3 machine, the rack configuration text file was saved in the same reporting format (columns and all) as the QPCSMPRT spooled file that it was generated from.

And That’s All There Is To It

As you can see, it isn’t too hard to generate and send a System i rack configuration to a vendor. All it takes is to know a few quick commands and shortcuts, and you’re on your way. If you have any further questions about rack configurations, feel free to email me using the Contacts button above and I may include your questions in a future column.

About Our Testing Environment

Configurations described in this article were tested on an i5 550 box running i5/OS V5R3. Most of the commands shown here are also available in earlier versions of the operating system running on iSeries or AS/400 machines. If a command or function is present in earlier versions of the i5/OS or OS/400 operating systems, you may notice some variations in the pre-V5R3 copies of these commands. These differences may be due to command improvements that have occurred from release to release.

RELATED RESOURCE

How to Generate A Rack Configuration For Non-Partitioned iSeries, IBM

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