IBM POWER Model 520 9407-M15
The IBM POWER Model 520 9407-M15 or in short the M15 is a one core, 4.2 Ghz POWER6 server.
It’s the successor of several System p systems (which i know nothing about), and of the System i Model 515 (9407-515). As such, it targets small businesses.
Yesterday i received the first M15, to be installed in for our SaaS (Software as a Service, the IBM Slang for Application Service Provider) Project. This is the first standalone POWER System that i got my hands on, but i’ve already tested running IBM i on Blades.
The M15 is a standard 19″ 4U Server at half depth that can hold dual power supplies for redundant power, has a variety of expansions slots and supports up to 6 internal 3.5″ SAS Disks. The integrated SAS RAID Controller has support for a battery backed write cache. You can also install several PCI-X and PCI-E cards. The system has 2 8x PCI-E Slots, one 16x PCI-E Slot and two PCI-X slots.
In this case, the system came with a HMC – a normal System x3550 configured with a single 320GB SATA Disk drive. Interestingly, we had ordered the same HMC (7310-CR4) half a year ago. Back then, it shipped with a 80GB SATA Drive and an external modem. This unit shipped with increased capacity in the SATA Disk drive, and an internal Modem. Though i have no idea why anyone would still use the modem.
The HMC isn’t very interesting from a hardware perspective either, so the focus is purely on the M15.
The first view on the front shows a new green bar, that symbolizes POWER6. I think it could use a bit of improvement, doesn’t look that nice. Much more interesting is that the control panel has essentially vanished. Like the light path diagnostics model in the System x, it has to be pulled out from the System to be of any use. This was probably done to save space.
The new control panel isn’t an improvement, unfortunately. Of course on systems with the a HMC attached you don’t really need it anymore – but most of the Systems we are going to ship will not have a HMC. The buttons are hard to use and hard to reach – it’ll be interesting doing procedures like 65+21 on those. This isn’t a deal breaker – but from IBM i expect them to get even details as this right – all in all, this isn’t a 1k Dell Server – it’s a 20k High-End IBM Server.
Much better in my opinion is that with the POWER Systems, the IBM i has finally moved to the year 2008 in regard to IO technologies. PCI-E and SAS is finally here. What i do not understand is why the M15 uses 3.5″ SAS Drives, and not 2.5″ SAS Drives. This would allow to fit more arms into the same chassis. e.G. the 2U System x3650 ships with the possibility to install up to 8 2.5″ arms. A 4U machine could have up to 16 arms – without needing more space.
The power supplies have been moved to the front of the unit, similar to the PCI Expansion units. I like it – the new power supplies are bit smaller than the older ones, and replacement is easier, thanks to them sitting in the front.
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The machine internals still seem a bit sketchy to me. The M15 wastes a lot of space that is used for the second CPU in larger machines. But it also has a completely new fan design, with four centrifugal fans in the back of the machine.
The new fan hot plug mechanism is very sturdy, and is comparable to the high quality fan design used in the System x3650. This was one of the biggest downfalls of the POWER5/5+ 520/515/525 hardware platforms that has been fixed in the new hardware. RAM accessibility still isn’t optimal in my opinion – you’ll still need to remove the fans to access the memory. IBM has better solutions for this – just look at the x3550 and x3650.
The fans are very, very loud. The unit we have here is a rack unit and the fact that there is no conversion option like for the POWER5 models might mean that the tower and rack units have different acoustic configurations or different dampeners. While loudness is a complete non-issue in a server room, smaller customers sometimes have the machine in their office. As soon as i get the first tower model i’ll write about their loudness level.
One of the things that’s completely new to the POWER platform is the HEA – the host ethernet adapter. It allows to share a physical NIC with other partitions – that’s a very good feature, but i wasn’t able to play with it yet – this machine is not partitioned.
The BBWC in this machine is now hot pluggable. It’s great to see this, but in my opinion it wasn’t really necessary. There’s a reminder directly on top of it that you need to set the disk cache into an error state before replacing it – and that reminder is very important. If you don’t pay attention to it, you might have to make an unexpected test of your DR strategy.
The expansion and console capabilities of the M15 are artificially restricted – you can not have a PCI-Expansion Unit (no HSL/12X Ports) and you cannot have IOPs in the base unit. The conclusion: No Twinax, No U320 Tapedrives.
Especially the Twinax bit is, in my opinion, a good move. It will force customers stuck in the AS/400 days to get current with all their other hardware like printers. On the other hand, it might also cause those customers to stay stuck with their model 270 or model 800. As for me personally, i’ll have to deal less with Twinax – which has to be a good thing.
The Thin Console, a very good option for Small Businesses, is gone (because HP bought Neoware). With Twinax also gone you now have the choice to either get a HMC for 6k or get a Windows PC and use LAN Console. Both options aren’t really what a Small Business needs – a console that “just works”. The TC and Twinax console fit those criteria. The LAN console has issues on their own (The whole Systam i Access package is … aging) and the HMC requires a boatload of expertise that SMB operators just don’t have. We will go with the LAN console, mainly due to the HMC pricing, but i’m not really content with the console situation on the new systems.
This picture shows the rear of the unit, as you can see the cabling in my lab environment is always top notch. The HEA offers 4 ports by default, a bit much for a standalone system. I’ve implemented a Virtual IP Address setup to create redundant network connections. Not as cool as native Teaming/Bonding support, but it works well enough.
In general, the new model has improved several things on the old hardware, left one or two things in the same state, and has two new issues (the control panel, noise level). All in all, a good solid deal of hardware.
Questions? Comments?
Patrick Bingham:
Lukas, nice write up. IBM announced this month rack/desktop conversions for the M15/M25/M50′s. Not sure what it is bringing in for hardware conversions though. Thanks for the blog!
1. August, 2008, 18:17Ronald Heye:
HI, can you help me with information about installation and configuration lan-console on a system i 9407-m15. where i found information about this connection???? Thanks for your help
18. August, 2008, 09:17Lukas Beeler:
Hi Ronald,
There are no special instructions necessary for the newer machines.
You can check the Systems Infocenter for detailed instructions. But in general, the procedure is very easy.
1.) Connect a crossover cable from the first LAN-Port (on 4x 1Gbit Card, not the HMC Ports) to your PC
18. August, 2008, 10:332.) Start Operations Console, configure the initial IP settings the Ops Console connection should have (this must be another ip than your IBM i OS will have)
3.) Start the connection
4.) IPL the System
5.) When prompted for U:PW enter 11111111 / 11111111
Russ Todaro:
[Advertising with some relevant information. Removed all vendor-identifying information.
--Lukas]
Luke,
Great review of the M15.
There is a very simple solution for Twinax support on the new M15 and M25s with no native Twinax capability.
The DeviceController will support all Twinax devices on the existing cabling infrastructure. It connects to the i5 over Ethernet.
It is 19″ rack mountable.
It is also an IBM ServerProven solution.
It will work with any version AS/400, iSeries or i5. People don’t need to “stay stuck with their model 270 or model 800″.
You can see a diagram of a typical installation
By the way, it also works to make locations with remote controllers capable of working as pure TCP/IP connections.
28. August, 2008, 12:33wongck:
Need some help here. I got a M15 machine. It already configure HMC as a console.
I want to convert it to ops console. But the machine just wont detect the ops console.
Refer to your steps as below, I got some question. When I configure an IP on the ops console, how about the LAN-port on the server? How do I know the IP? Will the server auto detect the ip? DHCP?
4. September, 2008, 12:411.) Connect a crossover cable from the first LAN-Port (on 4x 1Gbit Card, not the HMC Ports) to your PC
2.) Start Operations Console, configure the initial IP settings the Ops Console connection should have (this must be another ip than your IBM i OS will have)
3.) Start the connection
4.) IPL the System
5.) When prompted for U:PW enter 11111111 / 11111111
Oyvind:
Hi,
I just read the tips for getting the LAN Operations Console up and running. Ive been struggling with a brand new M25 last couple of days, trying to get the LAN console to work. The system is non-partioned and no HMC. It has a 4x 1GB Ethernet card, and two HMC slots, HMC1 and HMC2. I have setup the connection with a valid IP adress (217.173.248.86), mask and gateway, and the Console PC has a manually set IP in the same net(217.173.248.87), and same subnet and gw. The M25 server is going to have 217.173.248.85 one i can get into the system and configure a line.
I have an ethernet cable from the PC to the LAN, and one ethernet cable from the LAN to the M25, i have tried all the four slots, and also the two HMC slots.
After reading this post i want to try the crossover cable option, i just wondered what IP adress should the actual console PC have in this case, just use DHCP or set an IP adress, and which one?
Thanks in advance, im off to a bad start with the LAN console, never done it before :)
Best Regards
26. September, 2008, 22:32Oyvind
Lukas Beeler:
Oyvind,
These IP-Adresses are routable. It sounds like a very unlikely scenario to use routable IP-Adresses for the LAN Console function.
1.) Remember that there distinctly different concepts: The LAN Console uses it’s own port (but not adapter) with it’s own IP-Adress. IBM i OS uses another port with it’s own IP-Adress. So you need AT LEAST two IP-Adresses – one for the LAN Console Interface, and one for the IBM i Interface (with it’s own LIND and everything).
26. September, 2008, 22:502.) LAN Console configuration happens through BOOTP, which is very similar to DHCP, except older and more primitive. The OpsCon Application acts as a BOOTP server. Make sure that the OpsCon application can actually do that, desktop firewalls may prevent it from doing so.
3.) The system must be configured for LAN Console operation. You can use the 65+21 Service functions to make sure it is configured correctly. I’ve had several systems shipped from IBM that weren’t preconfigured correctly.
4.) OpsCon usually uses the first port of the adapter. It’s T5 in the model 515/525/520 (the POWER6 predecessors), and i don’t know in the top of my head on the newer systems – but it’s the port with the lowest number.
5.) Use WireShark or NEtwork Monitor to debug your BOOTP traffic.
6.) Make sure to configure OpsCon correctly. The default partition ID is 1, not 0.
Oyvind:
Hi!
I see. Well, once i get to login to the system, ill make a LIND and a interface, using IP 217.173.248.85, which will be the Ip for the iSeries server for users to access through Client Access.
As for the actual LAN Console, what IP adress, subnetmask and gateway can i use when i go through the Configuration wizard?
And, since LAn Console uses BOOTP, i dont assign a spesific IP to the network card in the Lan Console PC?
Thanks for helping me out!
Best Regards
26. September, 2008, 23:03Oyvind
Lukas Beeler:
Oyvind,
It doesn’t really matter which address you use. A good way for starts is to use a statically assigned address on the PC side (since the PC acts as BOOTP server it should have a static IP address).
Go with 192.168.1.1 for the IBM i (what you enter in the Wizard) and 192.168.1.2 for the PC (Subnet Mask 255.255.255.0, Gateway Address Empty, DNS Empty).
You can change this later if need arises, but if you just use a direct passthrough cable it doesn’t really matter.
26. September, 2008, 23:16Oyvind:
Hi again,
Thanks for all the help, cant wait to get to work next week and try this. The reason why i used those 217… adresses was because the customer wanted to be able to access the console from within his LAN, if i set the console IP to 192.. he wont be able to, or? But at this moment, i just want to be bale to login the system, setup a LIND and install all the software. I can worry about the access through LAn later on.
Again, thanks a lot.
Best Regards from Norway
26. September, 2008, 23:28Oyvind
Oyvind:
Hi again,
Just some feedback on what i did this last 3 days. I have tried the crossover cable, and setup the Ip adress in the LAN Console wizard with 192.168.1.1, the subnet mask with 255.255.255.0. I had to set a gateway IP, it would not let me have blanks there, so i put in 192.168.1.1 there too, which i was told by IBM to do. DNS i left blank.
On the actual LAN card on the PC, i manually set that to 192.168.1.2 and 255.255.255.0
Long story short, no connect after IPL’ing the M25, got A6005008 in manual mode. I used the “65 21″ procedure and found that the M25 was correctly shipped with LAN Console code. I then reset the Qconsole profile with a whole bunch of moving up and down on the tiny console. Still no connect.
I hooked up a seperat Switch i had brought with me, used the same IP adresses, but used normal ethernet cables of course. Nothing. I tried a diferent PC, nothing.
The PC i have been trying to setup as a LAN console is an IBM laptop with Windows XP, has V5R4 Client Access with the latest servicepack installed. It does however lack a bunch of windows updates i discovered tonight, not sure if that would matter but…
It would seem that i am …. out of luck here. I have a dialogue with IBM on this one, but i am all out of ideas as to what is wrong here.
Best Regards
2. October, 2008, 21:49Oyvind
Brian:
Hello,
6. November, 2008, 15:43I struggled with the Ops/Lan console configuration as well. We ended up getting it configured using a crossover cable to a PC that luckily had a GB ethernet port. THe network switch we initially attached the server to did not support GB and never even showed a link light. Once we got the ops console working using the crossover cable, we went into the M15 and hard coded the ethernet console port to 100/full and all our problems went away.
TomT:
We currently use SNA with SNDNETF to share files with our parent company in France. We are looking to move to an M15 in the near future. The problem is that the M15 doesn’t support SNA. The parent company calls the shots and says the programming must remain unchanged. Is there a solution where we can move to the M15 and still use SNDNETF?
Thanks,
18. November, 2008, 18:24Tom T.
Lukas Beeler:
TomT, the M15 supports SNA just fine, just not directly on Ethernet. You must encapsulate it in IP.
18. November, 2008, 18:50TomT:
>>You must encapsulate it in IP.
Lukas,
How is this generally done? Would the parent company have to change anything?
rgds,
18. November, 2008, 18:53Tom T.
Huon Sok:
How do you configure the static IP on the Host (AIX system)
with HMC console ?
Thanks,
Huon
25. November, 2008, 00:30ibm i guy:
man, your so lucky you get to play with all the latest toys!
2. May, 2009, 10:06Claudio:
Hello Lukas,
So this machine has several PCI slots.. good! Now the question is how to install the drivers of an ethernet card or fc-card. Does IBM use some internal drivers, already in the system, or is it necessary to install them somehow?
thx,
28. July, 2010, 12:57Claudio
Lukas Beeler:
Hi Claudio,
Depending on the operating system you intend to run, the drivers may be supplied with the operating system (IBM i, AIX) or may need to be configured seperatly (Linux).
28. July, 2010, 13:16