10.4. Preparation for IBM Power Systems Servers

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IBM Power Systems servers offer many options for partitioning, virtual or native devices, and consoles.

If you are using a non-partitioned system, you do not need any pre-installation setup. For systems using the HVSI serial console, hook up your console to the T2 serial port.

If using a partitioned system the steps to create the partition and start the installation are largely the same. You should create the partition at the HMC and assign some CPU and memory resources, as well as SCSI and Ethernet resources, which can be either virtual or native. The HMC create partition wizard steps you through the creation.

For more information on creating the partition, see the Partitioning for Linux with an HMC PDF in the IBM Systems Hardware Information Center.

If you are using virtual SCSI resources, rather than native SCSI, you must configure a 'link' to the virtual SCSI serving partition, and then configure the virtual SCSI serving partition itself. You create a 'link' between the virtual SCSI client and server slots using the HMC. You can configure a virtual SCSI server on either Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) or IBM i, depending on which model and options you have.

If you are installing using Intel iSCSI Remote Boot, all attached iSCSI storage devices must be disabled. Otherwise, the installation will succeed but the installed system will not boot.

For more information on using virtual devices, see the IBM Redbooks publication Virtualizing an Infrastructure with System p and Linux.

Once you have your system configured, you need to Activate from the HMC or power it on. Depending on the type of installation, you need to configure SMS to correctly boot the system into the installation program.