System Planning Tool - IBM Power 720 Overview

3.5 System Planning Tool

The IBM System Planning Tool (SPT) helps you design systems to be partitioned with logical
partitions. You can also plan for and design non-partitioned systems by using the SPT. The
resulting output of your design is called a
file can contain plans for a single system or multiple systems. The .sysplan file can be used
for the following reasons:
To create reports
As input to the IBM configuration tool (e-Config)
To create and deploy partitions on your system (or systems) automatically
System plans that are generated by the SPT can be deployed on the system by the Hardware
Management Console (HMC), or Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM).
Automatically deploy: Ask your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner to use the
Customer Specified Placement manufacturing option if you want to automatically deploy
your partitioning environment on a new machine. SPT looks for the resource's allocation to
be the same as that specified in your .sysplan file.
You can create an entirely new system configuration, or you can create a system
configuration based on any of these items:
Performance data from an existing system that the new system is to replace
Performance estimates that anticipates future workloads that you must support
Sample systems that you can customize to fit your needs
Integration between the System Planning Tool and both the Workload Estimator (WLE) and
IBM Performance Management (PM) allows you to create a system that is based on
performance and capacity data from an existing system or that is based on new workloads
that you specify.
You can use the SPT before you order a system to determine what you must order to support
your workload. You can also use the SPT to determine how you can partition a system that
you already have.
Using the System Planning Tool is an effective way of documenting and backing up key
system settings and partition definitions. With it, the user can create records of systems and
export them to their personal workstation or backup system of choice. These same backups
can then be imported back onto the same managed console when needed. This can be
useful when cloning systems enabling the user to import the system plan to any managed
console multiple times.
The SPT and its supporting documentation is on the IBM System Planning Tool site:
http://www.ibm.com/systems/support/tools/systemplanningtool/
system plan
, which is stored in a .sysplan file. This
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