PowerVC Novalink should support IPA/LDAP

We are running a significant operation with close to 40 Power servers. We use PowerVC, HMC and Novalink on (almost) every managed system to release the burden on the HMC and allow for easier system administration. Our 'management environment' has all kinds of components that accept administrator logins from an LDAP (in our case RedHat IPA) server; that includes the HMC, Virtual I/O Servers, tape library, storage devices and PowerVC itself. We also use IPA to authenticate users on Novalink.

But we often encounter problems either updating Novalink, or upgrading RedHat on the Novalink server. Either IPA authentication no longer works or the update/upgrade fails. Every time we contact support, the first statement they issue is that "third party software", or even packages from RedHat itself cannot be used to modify Novalink. After some discussion, IBM usually admits that using IPA/LDAP should be possible and comes up with a work-around.

But this kind of failure, and following discussion, pops up for every new release. We feel IBM should support using IPA/LDAP as it is generally unadvised to have multiple admins on 40 systems all having local accounts/passwords. IBM should provide a supported method for this and outline how to handle upgrades of Novalink and/or RHEL in those situations. And it should especially avoid a time-consuming discussion before providing a solution.