IBM 440 manual System Partition Manager

The modular scalability feature of XpandOnDemand offers the following benefits:

￿Performance scalability through the SMP Expansion Module

SMP Expansion Modules can be easily added at any time to increase the operational capacity of a node. By adding a second SMP Expansion Module, a system can take advantage of more processors, memory and Level 4 cache to increase overall system performance for managing more database users on a network or processing more transactions faster.

￿Performance scalability through multi-node SMP

Enterprise X-Architecture technology powers this industry-standard server building block. By linking two x440 nodes together, a customer can assemble a modular SMP system with increased performance.

￿I/O scalability through the RXE-100 Remote Expansion Enclosure

Adding additional PCI-X slots is achieved by connecting an RXE-100 Remote Expansion Enclosure to the server.

2.2.7System Partition Manager

System Partition Manager is designed for easily managing multi-node configurations, allowing the customer to build complexes of four-way and eight-way nodes up to 16-way SMP, define and activate/deactivate partitions, and enable automatic re-partitioning of hardware under the control of Director Event Action plans.

The other feature of System Partition Manager is chassis failure recovery. If the operating system crashes in a multi-node partition due to a failure of one of the chassis, System Partition Manager can generate an alert event to IBM Director, notifying the administrator to manually reconfigure the partition or initiating additional events to automatically reconfigure the multi-node partition and thus restart the chassis in that partition.

For this to occur, the system administrator would have created IBM Director action plans to define what action SPM must take when a chassis fails. Customers must consider such things as boot device attachment, data storage attachment, and other topology issues when configuring the complex and creating the action plans.

System Partition Manager uses the network link to the onboard systems management processor or adapter to establish the relationships among nodes. These relationships are maintained in a persistent database and can be recalled and activated at any time using the graphical interface.

48 IBM ^xSeries 440 Planning and Installation Guide