Understand the advantages of partitioning your server and practical
scenarios your company can use with this advanced technology.
Logical partitions on an iSeries™ server could prove beneficial in the following
scenarios:
Creating a Mixed Production and Test Environment
You
can create a combination production and test environment on the same server.
You can use a logical partition as a test partition or a production partition.
A production partition runs your main business applications. A failure in
a production partition could significantly hinder business operations and
cost the customer time and money. A test partition tests software. This might
include i5/OS™ release testing.
A failure in a test partition, while not necessarily planned, will not disrupt
normal business operations.
Creating a Multiple Production Partition Environment
You
create multiple production partitions in your secondary partitions. In this
situation, you dedicate the primary partition to partition management.
Consolidation
A logically partitioned server can reduce
the number of servers that are needed within an enterprise. You can consolidate
several servers into a single logically partitioned system. This eliminates
the need for, and expense of, additional equipment. You can shift resources
from one logical partition to another as needs change.
Hot Backup
When a secondary partition replicates another
logical partition within the same system, to switch to the backup during partition
failure would cause minimal inconvenience. This configuration also minimizes
the effect of long save windows. You can take the backup partition off line
and save, while the other logical partition continues to perform production
work. You will need special software to use this hot backup strategy.
Integrated Cluster
Using OptiConnect and high availability
application software, your partitioned server can run as an integrated cluster.
You can use an integrated cluster to protect your server from most unscheduled
failures within a secondary partition.
Maintaining Independent Systems
Dedicating a portion
of the resources (disk storage unit, processors, memory, and I/O devices)
to a partition achieves logical isolation of software. Logical partitions
also have some hardware fault tolerance if configured properly. Interactive
and batch workloads which may not run well together on a single machine can
be isolated and run efficiently in separate partitions.
Running Linux®
You could consolidate several Linux servers
to an iSeries server. Linux enhances iSeries flexibility
by enabling another application environment. Linux applications can access DB2® UDB as well
as i5/OS programs and services
using virtual Ethernet.