Partition Mobility requirements

Both source and target server must have POWER6 CPUs. JS22 blades are eligible (but not JS21)
Advanced POWER Virtualization Enterprise Edition (APV licenses sold prior to November 9, 2007 will be upgraded to Enterprise Edition free of charge)
If HMC-managed, both servers must be managed by the same HMC; if IVM-managed, neither server can be HMC-managed (IBM Virtualization Manager 1.2 is a no-charge extension to IBM Director 5.2. IVM is not supported on a p6 570 (Machine type-model 9117-MMA).)
LPAR to be moved must be running AIX V5.3, AIX V6.1, or Linux
Virtual I/O servers on the two servers must be able to communicate over the network

In the move preparation phase, the contents of an LPAR's memory must be transmitted over virtual Ethernet (via virtual I/O servers) from the source LPAR to the target LPAR. Pages updated after transmission must be transmitted again. Assuming a Gigabit Ethernet can transmit 80 MB/sec and that the mobile LPAR has 256 GB of memory allocated, it will take at least 256*1024/80 = 3276.8 seconds or one hour to prepare for the move if only a gigabit of network bandwidth is available. That's assuming source memory pages are not updated after they are transmitted, which is NOT a good assumption, so actual time will be longer. Each virtual I/O server will consume roughly one CPU on the source and one on the target managing the data transmission. And unless sufficient network bandwidth is available to accommodate the additional network activity, application network bandwidth and response time will be impacted during the move preparation phase.

Once the move preparation phase is complete, only a few seconds are required to actually move the LPAR.
All I/O must be virtualized in LPAR to be moved - any dedicated PCI adapters must be deallocated before an LPAR can be moved

AIX must boot from LUNs accessible to both virtual I/O servers. Considerations when booting from SAN suggest that AIX dump space (and perhaps the /var/adm/ras directory) be configured on a SCSI hdisk dedicated to the LPAR or a vSCSI disk which is mapped to an internal SCSI disk dedicated to a virtual I/O server LPAR). AIX dump space must therefore be deallocated (or moved to a LUN) prior to moving the LPAR and reallocated to a (different) dedicated SCSI disk after moving the LPAR. It is not clear if the /var/adm/ras directory can be deallocated and reallocated.
Network switches and routers must support and properly handle gratuitous ARP packets, so that when the network sees the LPAR's IP (and MAC?) addresses jump from one network port to another, the jump will be handled properly.
HACMP does not currently state support for Partition Mobility

If the above requirements are met, see the Partition mobility guidance web page for help installing and configuring Partition Mobility and see the IBM System p Live Partition Mobility Redbook for more information about Partition Mobility.

VIOServer Hints and Tips

This is an ad-hoc collection of tips.

Updateios -commit

1. Updateios -commit

If a fixkpack has been applied to VIOServer, any un-committed fixes will need to be committed before a subsequent fixpack can be applied. If required, this will be indicated when attempting the updateios command, for example:
updateios -dev /xxx -accept -install
"All uncommited updates must be commited prior to installing new updates"

To commit any previous updates: run the command
updateios -commit

If that command appears to "hang", start another terminal session and run
tail -f install.log
When there there is no additional output from the install.log, press Ctrl-C for the updateios command, and retry.