Administration Guide

PSSP

The PSSP software is a comprehensive suite of applications to manage an SP system as a full-function parallel processing system. It provides a single point of control for administrative tasks and helps increase productivity by letting administrators view, monitor, and control how the system operates. The PSSP software is discussed in terms of functional entities called components of PSSP. Most functions are base components of PSSP while others are optional; they come with PSSP, but you choose whether to install and use them.

Highlights

The components of PSSP are summarized and introduced in this section.

Notes:

1. If you are running mixed levels of the PSSP software, be sure to keep and use the respective documentation for each version of PSSP you are running.

2. There is some information on tuning, such as setting initial tuning parameters or reviewing sample tuning files, in the book PSSP: Installation and Migration Guide. Other tuning information that used to be in this book (PSSP Administration Guide) is now available at the Web address http://www.rs6000.ibm.com/support/sp/

The SP Resource Center

The SP Resource Center provides one simple interface for all softcopy SP documentation and information resources. It consists of HTML, Java, and Javascript files and works with a Web browser. The Resource Center provides access to a variety of information including publications, README files, Redbooks, White Papers, program information, as well as up-to-date service information.

Installation

The Network Installation Management (NIM) environment supports the installation of AIX 4.2.1 and later versions on nodes.

Configuration management

Node configuration data is entered into the System Data Repository (SDR) using SMIT or line commands. The SDR provides storage and retrieval of system data across the control workstation, file servers, and nodes.

Security

• |You can set up and enable a secure remote command process |that conforms to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Secure Shell |working group protocol to be used by the PSSP software in place of the |rsh and rcp commands.
• Authentication and authorization for the AIX remote commands can be performed using one or more of the following:
  1. The Kerberos V5 method provided by the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) software.
  2. The Kerberos V4 method using either the PSSP or the Andrew File System (AFS) components.
  3. The standard AIX method.
  4. |You can choose none, but if you do you must be operating |with a secure remote command process enabled.
• Optional authentication and authorization services are provided for use by SP trusted services. Methods used by services in prior PSSP releases (including Kerberos V4) and DCE can be used individually, in combination, or not at all.

Operation

The following are available to help you operate and manage your SP system:

• SP Perspectives

  This is a set of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) which can simplify your work, such as:

  • Monitor and control hardware
  • Create and monitor system events
  • Manage IBM virtual shared disks
  • Generate and save system partition configurations
• Centralized Management Interface

  This provides a SMIT-based interface for system management commands, as well as command line interface (CLI) equivalents.

• Tools are provided for orderly shutdown and restart of the system.

File management

Groups of files can be defined as a file collection and any changes to files in that collection are propagated to the appropriate nodes.

Virtual shared disk management

The PSSP components that help you create and manage virtual shared disks are:

• Virtual Shared Disk (VSD), the component with which you create and manage virtual shared disks. It has a device driver that operates with the AIX Logical Volume Manager for your applications that use the virtual shared disks. These can be concurrent virtual shared disks if you make use of the concurrent disk access environment supplied by AIX.
• Recoverable Virtual Shared Disk (RVSD), the component that provides the ability to recover data on your virtual shared disks when a node, adapter, or disk failure occurs.
• Hashed Shared Disk (HSD), the component that works with the Virtual Shared Disk component to offer data striping for your virtual shared disks.

These components are explained in the book PSSP: Managing Shared Disks.

SP user management

• Commands are supplied to add, change, and delete users and passwords.
• Users can have the same account, home directory, and environment across all nodes in the system.
• The user.admin file collection is provided for propagating user administration files to the nodes on the system.

Job management

As of PSSP 3.1, the SP job management function has been integrated into the IBM LoadLeveler licensed program.

Accounting

Accounting support provides accounting record consolidation and parallel job accounting.

Change management

• System partitions can be used to apply and test new levels of software.
• Parallel management commands can be used to apply maintenance directly to nodes.
• File collections can be used to propagate changed files to nodes that have the file collection installed.
• For extensive service a new mksysb can be created and the nodes reinstalled using NIM.

Communication subsystem support

The Communication Subsystem (ssp.css) supports the reliability and performance of the SP switch network.

Availability and problem management

• |PSSP uses the services provided by the RSCT components of AIX: |
  • |Group Services provide a distributed coordination and synchronization |service. For more information, see Chapter 24, The Group Services subsystem.
  • |Event Management matches information about the state of system resources |with information about resource conditions that are of interest to client |programs. For more information, see Chapter 25, The Event Management subsystem. |
• Problem Management provides for pairing actions with system events. For more information, see Chapter 26, Using the Problem Management subsystem.
• A single point of control for configuring, archiving, and maintaining various system logs on individual nodes is provided.
• Additional logs may be specified for use by applications.

Packaging

The PSSP software is packaged as several installp images. Each image contains one or more file sets. For complete information on these images and the file sets that each image contains, see the book PSSP: Installation and Migration Guide or the File Set List for PSSP table in the book IBM RS/6000 SP: Planning Volume 2, Control Workstation and Software Environment.