Installing the HMC virtual appliance

Learn how to install the Hardware Management Console (HMC) virtual appliance.

The HMC virtual appliance can be installed in your existing x86 or POWER® virtualized infrastructure. The HMC virtual appliance supports the following x86 virtualization hypervisors:
  • Kernel-based virtual machine (KVM)
  • Xen
  • VMware
The HMC virtual appliance supports the following POWER virtualization hypervisors:
  • PowerVM®
Minimum requirements for running the HMC virtual appliance:

  • 16 GB of memory

  • 4 virtual processors

  • 2 network interfaces (maximum of 4 allowed)

  • 1 disk drive that contains 500 GB of available disk space
    Note:

    PowerVM virtualization hypervisor requires 160 GB of disk space. 500 GB of memory is recommended.

    The minimum PowerVM processor requirement is 1.0 processing units and four shared virtual processors in capped sharing mode. Using dedicated processor is not recommended. 16 GB of memory is recommended.

Notes:
  1. The processor on the systems that host the HMC virtual appliance must be either an Intel VT-x or an AMD-V hardware virtualization-enabled processor.
  2. The HMC virtual appliance DVDs that you receive are not bootable. You must mount the media first and then copy the .tgz file from the media. The method to mount the DVD can vary depending on the operating system that you use.
  3. The command syntax that are used in the following examples can vary depending on the operating system that you use.
Performance and scale requirements:
  • When the HMC is at V9.2.950.0, or later, a single HMC can manage up to 48 systems and 2000 partitions across the systems that are managed by the HMC with the following requirements:
    • 16 GB memory for 1 - 500 partitions
    • 32 GB memory for 500 - 2000 partitions
  • You can refer to the corresponding product documentation to find the maximum number of systems and partitions that an HMC can manage, when the HMC is used in combination with Cloud Management Console (CMC), PowerVC, VM High Availability/Disaster Recovery (HA/DR).