Chapter 4. Hardware
Installation and Configuration Management
Chapter 4. Hardware
Installation and Configuration Management
RS/6000 servers are available in a variety of models. An RS/6000 system can be single processor or multiprocessor. Currently, models comply to a number of architecture specifications such as Micro Channel, PowerPC Reference Platform (PREP), Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP), and RS/6000 Platform Architecture (RPA).
The hardware platform type is an abstraction that allows machines to be grouped according to fundamental configuration characteristics such as the number of processors and/or I/O bus structure. Machines with different hardware platform types will have basic differences in the way their devices are dynamically configured at boot time. Currently available hardware platforms, which are able to be differentiated by software, in RS/6000 family are:
In order to determine the hardware platform type on your machine, enter the following command:
bootinfo -p
This will return rs6k, rs6ksmp, rspc, or chrp as output.
You can also use the lscfg command to
determine the type of hardware platform you have. The lscfg command
provides output similar to Figure 15:
Figure 15: Finding Out the Hardware Platform Type
It is important to know what kind of system you have and what its capabilities are if you decide to use your system for special purposes, such as a Web server, a CATIA workstation, or for running heavy database applications.
Web servers require fast networking connections, CATIA workstations require a powerful graphics adapter, and database applications require large responsive disk drives.
You can determine a specific subset of the configuration by using grep, or additional command flags. For example, in order to find out the number of processors you have, enter either of the following commands:
4.2 Adapter and Device
Configuration