E.1 What Is Ibm Dynamic Partition Manager - IBM z13s Technical Manual

E.1 What is IBM Dynamic Partition Manager?

DPM is a z Systems mode of operation that provides a simplified approach to creating and
managing virtualized environments, reducing the barriers to its adoption for new and existing
customers. The implementation provides built-in integrated capabilities that allow advanced
virtualization management on z Systems servers. With DPM, customers can use their
existing Linux and virtualization skills while getting the full value of z Systems hardware:
Robustness and security in a workload optimized environment.
DPM provides facilities to define and run virtualized computing systems, using a firmware
managed environment that coordinates the physical system resources shared by the
partitions
and accelerators.
DPM provides a new mode of operation for z Systems servers that provides these
advantages:
Facilitates defining, configuring, and operating partitions similar to the way that you
perform these tasks on other platforms.
Lays the foundation for a general z Systems new user experience.
DPM is not an additional hypervisor for z Systems servers. DPM uses the existing PR/SM
hypervisor infrastructure and, on top of it, provides an intelligent interface that allows
customers to define, use, and operate the platform virtualization with no z Systems
experience or skills.
Note: When z Systems servers are set to run in DPM mode, only Linux virtual servers can
be defined by using the provided user server definition interface. KVM for IBM z Systems is
also supported in DPM mode.
E.2 Why use DPM?
DPM mode is targeted at customers (distributed market) with no specific z Systems skills or
knowledge of z/VM, who want to implement and use the cloud infrastructure, consolidate and
integrate their IT, and ease the management and administration of their Linux environment
and workloads.
DPM is of special value for specific customer segments with the following characteristics:
New z Systems, or Linux adopters, or distributed driven
– Likely not z/VM users
– Looking for integration into their distributed business models
– Want ease of migration of distributed environments to z Systems servers and improve
centralized management
Currently not running on z Systems servers
– No z Systems skills
– Want to implement cloud
– Have expectations acquired from another hypervisors' management suite (for example,
VMware, KVM, or Citrix)
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DPM uses the term "partition", which is the same as logical partition (LPAR).
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. The partitions' resources include processors, memory, network, storage, crypto,