Partition mobility
Partition mobility, a component of the PowerVM® Enterprise Edition hardware feature, provides the ability to migrateAIX®, IBM® i, and Linux logical partitions from one system to another. The mobility process transfers the system environment that includes the processor state, memory, attached virtual devices, and connected users.
The Suspend/Resume feature for logical partitions is supported on POWER8® processor-based servers when the firmware is at level FW840, or later.
Active partition migration, or Live Partition Mobility, allows you to migrate AIX, IBM i, and Linux logical partitions that are running, including the operating system and applications, from one system to another. The logical partition and the applications running on that migrated logical partition do not need to be shut down.
Inactive partition migration, or cold partition mobility, allows you to migrate a powered off AIX, IBM i, or Linux logical partition from one system to another.
You can use the Hardware Management Console (HMC), or the Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM) to migrate an active or inactive logical partition from one server to another. You cannot migrate a mobile partition from a system that is managed by an HMC to a system that is managed by IVM. Similarly you cannot migrate a mobile partition from a system that is managed by IVM to a system that is managed by an HMC.
Because the HMC always migrates the last activated profile, an inactive logical partition that has never been activated cannot be migrated. For inactive partition mobility, you can either select the partition state defined in the hypervisor, or select the configuration data defined in the last activated profile on the source server. Use the IVM to migrate a logical partition that has never been activated.
- When you are moving a mobile partition from the source server to the destination server, you cannot migrate another mobile partition from the destination server to the source server.
- When you are moving a mobile partition from the source server to the destination server, you cannot migrate another mobile partition from the destination server to some other server.