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Status Delivered
Workspace PowerVM
Created by Guest
Created on Oct 10, 2020

RELATED IDEAS

PowerVM LPAR flag time_ref is not working on servers with LPM capability turned off

Although LPM capability is part of PowerVM by default in Power9 servers, there are setups which have this capability deactivated due to licensing requirements of 3rd party software (looking at you, Oracle).

Due to substantially less precise source of TOD clock in Power8/Power9 hardware (https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/time-drift-power8-and-power9-servers), LPAR flag time_ref is sysadmins weapon of choice used to maintain server TOD clock in sync (usually turned on on 1st vio lpar running on server).

Unfortunately, with LPM capability flag off, it's not possible to set up time_ref on any of LPARs - trying to do so, administrator is stopped by error message "The attributes time_ref can only be specified when the managed system supports active partition mobility.".

As keeping system time in sync is crucial in most environments, I would like to propose enabling usage of time_ref also on servers with disabled LPM capability.

If this is not possible for any reason, there's another (maybe even more universal) way of achieving the same:
Enable NTP client feature on service processor. By allowing administrator to set up NTP servers directly in ASMI menus of system, system TOD clock could be synced to external time reference without need of any active participation of the LPARs running on it.

Idea priority Medium

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