Power7 High-End System Firmware

Applies to: 9119-FHB

This document provides information about the installation of Licensed Machine or Licensed Internal Code, which is sometimes referred to generically as microcode or firmware.

Contents

1.0 Systems Affected

This package provides firmware for Power 795 (9119-FHB) Servers only.

The firmware level in this package is:

1.1 Minimum HMC Code Level

This section is intended to describe the "Minimum HMC Code Level" required by the System Firmware to complete the firmware installation process. When installing the System Firmware, the HMC level must be equal to or higher than the "Minimum HMC Code Level" before starting the system firmware update.  If the HMC managing the server targeted for the System Firmware update is lower than the "Minimum HMC Code Level" the firmware update will not proceed.

The Minimum HMC Code level for this firmware is:  HMC V7 R7.2.0 (PTF MH01233 or MH01234) and PTF MH01246 (Service Pack 1).

Although the Minimum HMC Code level for this firmware is listed above,  HMC level V7 R7.2.0 with PTF MH01276 (Service Pack 3), or higher is suggested for this firmware level.

For information concerning HMC releases and the latest PTFs,  go to the following URL to access Fix Central.
http://www-933.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/

For specific fix level information on key components of IBM Power Systems running the AIX, IBM i and Linux operating systems, we suggest using the Fix Level Recommendation Tool (FLRT):
http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/flrt/home

NOTES:
                -You must be logged in as hscroot in order for the firmware installation to complete correctly.
                - Systems Director Management Console (SDMC) does not support this System Firmware level.

2.0 Important Information

Prior to this service pack, the system firmware was not properly enforcing the system partition processor limit (SPPL) attribute for shared processor partitions.  This service pack fixes that enforcement to ensure that shared processor partitions comply with the limit for virtual processors when the SPPL setting is 24 or 32.

You will be affected by this change if you have the following configuration:
   - 795 class server (model 9119-FHB)
   - The server has 3 or fewer books, or the server has 4 or more books and the SPPL attribute is set to 24 or 32.
   - The server has 24 processor cores per book and you have configured more than 24 virtual processors for a shared processor partition.
   - The server has 32 processor cores per book and you have configured more than 32 virtual processors for a shared processor partition.

After this service pack is installed, the behavior of the shared processor partitions that exceed the SPPL attribute will change as follows:

- Partition activation:
   - Partitions will continue to boot and reboot successfully unless the minimum number of virtual processors is greater than the SPPL.
   - Partitions that are activated will limit the number of active virtual processors to no more than the SPPL limit.

- Partition configuration:
   - Errors that are logged when the SPPL is exceeded can result in HMC errors HSCLA4D6 and HSC0A4D6.
   - Attempts to change the number of virtual processors or entitled processing units via a profile or dynamic LPAR change will be subject to
     the SPPL setting of 24 or 32.  For example, if the SPPL is set to 32 and your shared processor partition is configured with 40 virtual processors,   you must reduce the
     number of virtual processors to 32 or fewer for the change to be successful.
   - If you create a new shared processor partition, the number of virtual processors must not exceed the SPPL value.

- Partition mobility:
   -  A partition must comply with the SPPL of the target server.

- Partition hibernation (suspend/resume):
   - If you have suspended partitions that have exceeded the SPPL limit and install this service pack, you will not be able to successfully resume those suspended
     partitions.  You should ensure all suspended partitions comply with (have virtual processors fewer than or equal to) the new SPPL limit before installing this service pack.

Downgrading firmware from any given release level to an earlier release level is not recommended.
If you feel that it is necessary to downgrade the firmware on your system to an earlier release level, please contact your next level of support.

IPv6 Support and Limitations

IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is supported in the System Management Services (SMS) in this level of system firmware. There are several limitations that should be considered.

When configuring a network interface card (NIC) for remote IPL, only the most recently configured protocol (IPv4 or IPv6) is retained. For example, if the network interface card was previously configured with IPv4 information and is now being configured with IPv6 information, the IPv4 configuration information is discarded.

A single network interface card may only be chosen once for the boot device list. In other words, the interface cannot be configured for the IPv6 protocol and for the IPv4 protocol at the same time.

Memory Considerations for Firmware Upgrades

Firmware Release Level upgrades and Service Pack updates may consume additional system memory.
Server firmware requires memory to support the logical partitions on the server. The amount of memory required by the server firmware varies according to several factors.
Factors influencing server firmware memory requirements include the following:
Generally, you can estimate the amount of memory required by server firmware to be approximately 8% of the system installed memory. The actual amount required will generally be less than 8%. However, there are some server models that require an absolute minimum amount of memory for server firmware, regardless of the previously mentioned considerations.

Additional information can be found at:
  http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/powersys/v3r1m5/topic/p7hat/iphatlparmemory.htm

3.0 Firmware Information and Description

Use the following examples as a reference to determine whether your installation will be concurrent or disruptive.

Note: The concurrent levels of system firmware may, on occasion, contain fixes that are known as deferred. These deferred fixes can be installed concurrently, but will not be activated until the next IPL. Deferred fixes, if any, will be identified in the "Firmware Update Descriptions" table of this document. For deferred fixes within a service pack, only the fixes in the service pack which cannot be concurrently activated are deferred.

Note: The file names and service pack levels used in the following examples are for clarification only, and are not necessarily levels that have been, or will be released.

System firmware file naming convention:

01AHXXX_YYY_ZZZ

NOTE: Values of service pack and last disruptive service pack level (YYY and ZZZ) are only unique within a release level (XXX). For example, 01AH330_067_045 and 01AH340_067_053 are different service packs.

An installation is disruptive if:

Example: Currently installed release is EH330, new release is EH340 Example: AH330_120_120 is disruptive, no matter what level of AH330 is currently
installed on the system Example: Currently installed service pack is AH330_120_120 and
new service pack is AH330_152_130

An installation is concurrent if:

Example: Currently installed service pack is AH330_126_120,
new service pack is AH330_143_120.
 
Filename Size Checksum
01AH720_113_064.rpm 49351217 25578
   
Note: The Checksum can be found by running the AIX sum command against the rpm file (only the first 5 digits are listed).
ie: sum 01AH720_113_064.rpm
AH720
For Impact, Severity and other Firmware definitions, Please refer to the below 'Glossary of firmware terms' url:
http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/power5cm/home.html#termdefs

The complete Firmware Fix History for this Release Level can be reviewed at the following url:
http://download.boulder.ibm.com/ibmdl/pub/software/server/firmware/AH-Firmware-Hist.html
AH720_113_064

06/28/12		 Impact: Availability          Severity:  SPE 

New Features and Functions

  • PARTITION-DEFERRED: Support for Live Partition Mobility (LPM) between systems running Ax720 system firmware, and 8246-L2S systems.

System firmware changes that affect all systems

  • The firmware was enhanced to increase the threshold of soft NVRAM errors on the service processor to 32 before SRC B15xF109 is logged.  (Replacement of the service processor is recommended if more than one B15xF109 is logged per week.)
  • The firmware was enhanced to call out the correct field replaceable units (FRUs) when SRC B124E504 with description "Chnl init TO due to SN stuck in recovery" was logged.
  • A problem was fixed that caused informational SRC A70047FF, which may indicate that the Anchor (VPD) card should be replaced, to be erroneously logged again after the Anchor card was replaced.
  • A problem was fixed that caused booting from a virtual fibre channel tape device to fail with SRC B2008105.
  • A problem was fixed that caused a dynamic LPAR (DLPAR) add operation to fail on an empty PCI slot that is not hot-pluggable.
  • The firmware was enhanced to more gracefully handle the system shutdown that is required when a hypervisor hang condition was encountered.  SRCs B7000602, B182951C, B1813918 and A7001151 were logged, and a service processor failover occurred, when the hypervisor hang condition and subsequent system crash occurred.
  • A problem was fixed that caused a system to crash when the system was in low power (or safe) mode, and the system attempted to switch over to nominal mode.
  • A problem was fixed that caused the system to crash after a recoverable error was logged on an I/O hub.
  • A problem was fixed that caused SRC B7006990 to be incorrectly logged, instead of SRC B7006991, when the hypervisor is unable to communicate with the secondary system controller at system boot.
System firmware changes that affect certain systems
  • The firmware was enhanced to fix a potential performance degradation on systems utilizing the stride-N stream prefetch instructions dcbt (with TH=1011) or dcbtst (with TH=1011).  Typical applications executing these algorithms include High Performance Computing, data intensive applications exploiting streaming instruction prefetchs, and applications utilizing the Engineering and Scientific Subroutine Library (ESSL) 5.1.
  • A problem was fixed that caused the hypervisor to hang during a concurrent operation on a F/C 5802, 5803, 5873 or 5877 I/O drawer.  Recovering from the hypervisor hang required a platform reboot.
  • A problem was fixed that impacted performance if profiling was enabled in one or more partitions.  Performance profiling is enabled:
        - In an AIX or VIOS partition using the tprof (-a, -b, -B, -E option) command or pmctl (-a, -E option) command.
        - In an IBM i partition when the PEX *TRACE profile (TPROF) collections or PEX *PROFILE collections are active.
        - In a Linux partition using the perf command, which is available in RHEL6 and SLES11; profiling with oprofile does not cause the problem.
Concurrent hot add/repair maintenance firmware fixes
  • A problem was fixed that caused multiple types of failures (CHARM node  operations and Advanced Energy Manager (AEM) state changes, among others), after a CHARM hot node operation on the first (top) drawer (or the first logical node) was followed by a concurrent firmware installation.
  • A problem was fixed that caused unrecoverable SRCs B1813918 and B182953C during a CHARM operation.
AH720_108_064

01/23/12		 Impact: Availability           Severity:  HIPER - High Impact/PERvasive, Should be installed as soon as possible. 

System firmware changes that affect all systems

  • HIPER/Not pervasive:  A problem was fixed that caused the system to crash with SRC B18187DA.
  • The firmware was enhanced to log SRC B1768B76 as informational instead of unrecoverable.
  • The firmware was enhanced to increase the threshold for recoverable SRC B113E504 so that the processor core reporting the SRC is not guarded out.  This prevents performance loss and the unnecessary replacement of processor modules.
  • A problem was fixed prevented a platform system dump from being deleted when the file system space on the service processor was full.
  • The firmware was enhanced to log SRC B1812A11 as informational, instead of "service action required", when the thermal/power management device (TPMD) is successfully reset.
  • The field replaceable unit (FRU) callouts were enhanced for SRC B181E550.
  • A problem was fixed that caused the message "500 - Internal Server Error." to be displayed when a setting was changed on the Advanced System Management Interface's (ASMI's) power on/off menu, when the change was attempted when the system was powering down.
  • A problem was fixed that erroneously caused SRC B1818601 to be logged and an FSP dump to be generated.
  • The firmware was enhanced to log an error, instead of causing a kernel panic, if a guard record was corrupted or truncated.
  • A problem was fixed that caused the wrong error code to be logged when the memory test took longer than normal during system boot.
  • A problem was fixed that caused a system's partition dates to revert back to 1969 after the service processor or its battery was replaced.  This occurred regardless of whether or not the service processor's time-of-day (TOD) clock was correctly set during the service action. 
  • A problem was fixed that caused the system to appear to hang, and a service processor reset/reload to occur, when multiple hardware errors occurred.
  • A problem was fixed that caused SRC B7005442 to be erroneously logged, and functional processor cores to be guarded out, when an error occurred in the operation system or an application.
  • A problem was fixed that erroneously caused SRC B1818601 to be logged and an FSP dump to be generated. 
  • A problem was fixed that caused multiple service processor dumps to be unnecessarily taken during a concurrent firmware update.  SRC B181EF9A, which indicates that the dump space on the service processor is full, was logged as a result.
  • The firmware was enhanced by the addition of a new option in the system management services (SMS) "Multi-boot" menu that facilitates zoning of physical and virtual fibre channel adapters.
  • A problem was fixed that caused a firmware installation from the HMC with the "do not auto accept" option selected to fail.
  • A problem was fixed that caused SRC B18138B7 to be erroneously logged, and the service processor to terminate, when errors were continuously logged due to failing hardware.  This problem can cause both node controllers to terminate, which disables the node.
  • Please see the detailed description of this defect in the "Important Information" section of this document.
  • A problem was fixed that caused SRC B1754201, with memory DIMMs in the FRU list, to be erroneously logged after the reset/reload of a node controller.
  • The firmware was enhanced to correctly log an error when the bulk power controllers' firmware levels don't match.

System firmware changes that affect certain systems

  • HIPER/Pervasive on systems with a Virtual Input/Output (VIO) client running AIX, and with a F/C 5803 or 5873 I/O drawer attached:  A problem was fixed that caused the system to crash with SRC B700F103.
  • HIPER/Not pervasive:  On systems running the Advanced Energy Manager, a problem was fixed that caused the system to crash with SRC B114E504.
  • On systems running more than 100 logical partitions, a problem was fixed that caused a concurrent firmware installation to fail.
  • On systems running the Advanced Energy Manager (AEM), that terminates when in dynamic power save mode, a problem was fixed that caused SRCs B150B943, B113C660, and B113C661 to be erroneously logged when the system rebooted.
  • On systems running Active Memory Sharing (AMS), the firmware was enhanced to reduce the time required to migrate an AMS partition.
  • On systems running Active Memory Sharing (AMS), a problem was fixed that caused the system to crash during the creation of a logical partition (LPAR).
  • On systems running Active Memory Sharing (AMS), a problem was fixed that prevented an AMS partition from being activated with SRC B2006009.
  • On systems running VIOS, a problem was fixed that caused the location code in the output of the VIOS command "lsmap -npiv -all" to be incorrect.
  • A problem was fixed that caused a shared processor partition that is configured with two virtual processors and an entitled capacity of 1.0 processors to hang when only one processor is in the physical shared pool.
  • On systems running iSCSI, a problem was fixed that caused the system to hang when booting from an iSCSI device in the system management services (SMS) menus.
  • On the System Management Services (SMS) remote IPL (RIPL) menus, a problem was fixed that caused the SMS menu to continue to show that an Ethernet device is configured for iSCSI, even though the user has changed it to BOOTP.
  • On systems running the Advanced Energy Manager (AEM), a problem was fixed that caused the work rate calculation for a processor to be incorrect if the system dropped into safe mode.
  • On systems from which a node has been removed, a problem was fixed that caused the node to continue to be listed when the Processing Unit Deconfiguration option was selected on the Advanced System Management Interface (ASMI) menus.
  • On systems in which a service processor had been guarded out manually, a problem was fixed that caused the Deconfiguration Records option, which is under the System Service Aids in the Advanced System Management Interface (ASMI), to display null data for that service processor.
  • The firmware was enhanced to allow the Enhanced Cache Option (also known as Turbo Core) to be enabled when three or more  processor nodes are present.

4.0 How to Determine Currently Installed Firmware Level

You can view the server's current firmware level on the Advanced System Management Interface (ASMI) Welcome pane. It appears in the top right corner. Example: AH350_038.

5.0 Downloading the Firmware Package

Follow the instructions on the web page. You must read and agree to the license agreement to obtain the firmware packages.

Note: If your HMC is not internet-connected you will need to download the new firmware level to a CD-ROM or ftp server.

6.0 Installing the Firmware

The method used to install new firmware will depend on the release level of firmware which is currently installed on your server. The release level can be determined by the prefix of the new firmware's filename.

Example: EHXXX_YYY_ZZZ

Where XXX = release level

Instructions for installing firmware updates and upgrades can be found at http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/powersys/v3r1m5/index.jsp?topic=/p7ha1/updupdates.htm

7.0 Firmware History

The complete Firmware Fix History for this Release Level can be reviewed at the following url:
http://download.boulder.ibm.com/ibmdl/pub/software/server/firmware/AH-Firmware-Hist.html