vI/O Drawers The I/O drawer is a 4 EIA-unit-high drawer containing up to two I/O
boards, up to 16 disk drives, four DASD backplanes, a midplane card, four cooling
fans and two power supplies (which are independent of the bulk power assembly).
The base rack configuration can have up to four I/O drawers with each drawer
having 20 PCI card slots, and more than 500 GB of storage. An expansion rack can
be connected to the base system and contain additional I/O drawers and IBFs.
Note: If your base rack configuration contains an IBF,the space in the rack for the
fourth I/O drawer in that rack is not available.However, an expansion rack
allows you to add additional I/O drawers and an additional IBF.
vHardware Management Console (HMC) - The HMC consists of a display,
independent processor, keyboard, and mouse. The HMC is mandatory for all
systems. For more information on the use of logical partitioned systems, see the
“Partitioned System Overview”.
Partitioned System Overview
Partitioning enables users to configure a single computer into several independent
systems. Each of these systems, called

logical partitions

, is capable of running
applications in its own independent environment. This independent environment
contains its own operating system, its own set of system processors, its own set of
system memory, and its own I/O adapters.
An

affinity partition

is a special type of logical partition in which processors and system
memory are allocated in a predefined way that may increase performance when running
some types of applications (memory is assigned to a processor that is in close physical
proximity to it).
The HMC allows you to perform many hardware management tasks for your managed
system, including configuring logical partitions. You can choose to operate your
managed system as a single server (called

full system partitions

), or you can choose to
run multiple partitions.
Partition Profiles
A profile defines a configuration setup for a managed system or partition. The HMC
allows you to create multiple profiles for each managed system or partition. You can
then use the profiles you created to start a managed system or partition in a particular
configuration.
A partition does not actually own any resources until it is activated; resource
specifications are stored within partition profiles. The same partition can operate using
different resources at different times, depending on the profile you activate.
When you activate a partition, you enable the system to create a partition using the set
of resources in a profile created for that partition. For example, a logical partition profile
might indicate to the managed system that its partition requires three processors, 2
gigabytes of memory, and I/O slots 6, 11,and 12 when activated.
Chapter 1. Introducing the EserverpSeries 690 3