Administration › Configuration Management › IBM PowerVM Server Administration Overview

IBM PowerVM Server Administration Overview

The CA IBM PowerVM component of CA Virtual Assurance lets you monitor and manage IBM PowerVM resources. The monitored and managed resources consist of the following types:

• Hardware Management Console (HMC)
• Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM)
• Virtual IO Server (VIOS)
• Managed System (POWER Server)
• Logical Partition (LPAR)

The Hardware Management Console (HMC) is an external appliance used to perform management tasks on IBM POWER Servers. HMC can be used to create or change logical partitions, including dynamically assigning resources to a partition. The HMC communicates with the server firmware layers of POWER servers, providing a single point of control in large PowerVM environments.

The Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM) is an enhancement of the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) and allows you to manage a single POWER Server. IVM lets you create and manage LPARs. IVM enables management of VIOS functions and provides a web-based user interface.

A Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) is a special logical partition configured to own all physical I/O resources and provides its virtualization capabilities to other LPARs. LPARs access disk, network, and optical devices through the Virtual I/O Servers as virtual devices. Each PowerVM system with virtualized resources has a Virtual I/O Server.

A Logical Partition (LPAR) is a subset of hardware resources, virtualized as a separate system. A physical system can be partitioned into multiple LPARs, each providing a separate operating system and applications. The number of logical partitions depends on the hardware configuration of the system. LPARs communicate in the network as separate systems.

To manage IBM PowerVM resources, provide SSH access credentials to HMC/IVM Servers and Virtual I/O Servers.

You can configure CA Virtual Assurance to manage PowerVM resources by using one of the following methods:

• Performing a custom CA Virtual Assurance installation.
• Using the IBM PowerVM Server panels from CA Virtual Assurance Administration, Configuration.

The following panels are available:

• HMC/IVM Servers
• Virtual I/O Servers
• LPAR AIM Servers

The LPAR AIM Server is the system on which SystemEDGE and the LPAR AIM run. The LPAR AIM can run on the local CA Virtual Assurance manager system or on a remote Windows server. The LPAR AIM is a multi-instance AIM that can connect to multiple HMCs/IVMs. After a successful connection to an HMC or IVM server, the AIM can start discovering the associated POWER Servers.