{{Refimprove, date=October 2020 Hardware Management Console (HMC) is a Physical / Virtual appliance used to manage IBM Systems including

IBM AS/400 The IBM AS/400 (Application System/400) is a family of midrange computers from IBM announced in June 1988 and released in August 1988. It was the successor to the System/36 and System/38 platforms, and ran the OS/400 operating system. Lower-cost ...

IBM System p The IBM System p is a high-end line of RISC (Power)/UNIX-based servers. It was the successor of the RS/6000 line, and predecessor of the IBM Power Systems server series. History The previous RS/6000 line was originally a line of workstations and ...

IBM System z IBM Z is a family name used by IBM for all of its z/Architecture mainframe computers. In July 2017, with another generation of products, the official family was changed to IBM Z from IBM z Systems; the IBM Z family now includes the newest mod ...

, and IBM Power Systems. HMC supports command line (ssh) as well as web (https) user interfaces and

REST Rest or REST may refer to: Relief from activity * Sleep ** Bed rest * Kneeling * Lying (position) * Sitting * Squatting position Structural support * Structural support ** Rest (cue sports) ** Armrest ** Headrest ** Footrest Arts and entert ...

API. Using an HMC, the

system administrator A system administrator, or sysadmin, or admin is a person who is responsible for the upkeep, configuration, and reliable operation of computer systems, especially multi-user computers, such as servers. The system administrator seeks to ensu ...

can manage many systems and partitions. It can also be used for monitoring and servicing a system.

Power Systems HMC Versions

* HMC HMC V10 R1 M1010 for

POWER8 POWER8 is a family of superscalar multi-core microprocessors based on the Power ISA, announced in August 2013 at the Hot Chips conference. The designs are available for licensing under the OpenPOWER Foundation, which is the first time for s ...

POWER9 POWER9 is a family of superscalar, multithreading, multi-core microprocessors produced by IBM, based on the Power ISA. It was announced in August 2016. The POWER9-based processors are being manufactured using a 14 nm FinFET process, in ...

and

POWER10 Power10 is a superscalar, multithreading, multi-core microprocessor family, based on the open source Power ISA, and announced in August 2020 at the Hot Chips conference; systems with Power10 CPUs. Generally available from September 2021 ...

Servers * HMC V9, for

POWER7 POWER7 is a family of superscalar multi-core microprocessors based on the Power ISA 2.06 instruction set architecture released in 2010 that succeeded the POWER6 and POWER6+. POWER7 was developed by IBM at several sites including IBM's Roche ...

and

models (

POWER6 The POWER6 is a microprocessor developed by IBM that implemented the Power ISA v.2.03. When it became available in systems in 2007, it succeeded the POWER5+ as IBM's flagship Power microprocessor. It is claimed to be part of the eCLipz projec ...

support was dropped) ** HMC V9R9.1.0 (Initial release - Support for both x86_64 and ppc64le based HMCs - dropped support for Classic GUI) * HMC V8, for

and

models ( POWER5 support was dropped) ** HMC V8R8.7.0 (latest version) ** HMC V8R8.6.0 ** HMC V8R8.5.0 ** HMC V8R8.4.0 ** HMC V8R8.3.0 (Initial support for Enhanced+ GUI) ** HMC V8R8.2.0 ** HMC V8R8.1.0 (Initial release) * HMC V7, for POWER5,

and

models ** HMC V7R7.9.0 (Initial support for

SR-IOV In virtualization, single root input/output virtualization (SR-IOV) is a specification that allows the isolation of PCI Express resources for manageability and performance reasons. Details A single physical PCI Express bus can be shared in a virt ...

cards, REST API) ** HMC V7R3.3.0

Unsupported Versions

* HMC V7 ** HMC V7R7.2.0 (initial support for Power 710, Power 720, Power 730, Power 740 and Power 795 models) ** HMC V7R7.1.0 (initial support for

) ** HMC V7R3.5.0 (released Oct. 30, 2009) ** HMC V7R3.4.0 ** HMC V7R3.2.0 ** HMC V7R3.1.0 (initial support for

models) * HMC V6 ** HMC V6R1.3 ** HMC V6R1.2 * 5.2.1 * 5.1.0 * 4.5.0 * 4.4.0 * 4.3.1 * 4.2.1 * 4.2.0, for POWER5 models * 4.1.x * 3.x, for

POWER4 The POWER4 is a microprocessor developed by International Business Machines (IBM) that implemented the 64-bit PowerPC and PowerPC AS instruction set architectures. Released in 2001, the POWER4 succeeded the POWER3 and RS64 microprocessors, ena ...

models

HMC for System z

The HMC is a PC connected to the mainframe. zSeries mainframes prior to the

IBM System z9 IBM System z9 is a line of IBM mainframe computers. The first models were available on September 16, 2005. The System z9 also marks the end of the previously used eServer zSeries naming convention. It was also the last mainframe compute ...

used a modified version of

OS/2 OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 ...

with custom software to provide the interface. System z9's HMC no longer uses OS/2, but instead uses a modified version of

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

with an OS/2 lookalike interface to ease transition as well as a new interface. Unlike the previous HMC application on OS/2, the new HMC is web-based which means that even local access is done via a

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

. Remote HMC access is available, although only over an SSL encrypted

HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, ...

connection. The web-based nature means that there is no longer a difference between local console access and remote access, which means a remote user potentially has full control if authorized, allowing more flexibility for locating systems within data centers. IBM refers to the new HMC as a "closed platform" which does not allow the user to install software or access the

command line interface A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...

to increase security and stability. The HMC is also firewalled by default with a minimal number of open ports for remote access.

References

External links

HMC communityIBM HMC support homepage

Hardware Management Console {{Refimprove, date=October 2020 Hardware Management Console (HMC) is a Physical / Virtual appliance used to manage IBM Systems including IBM AS/400, IBM System p, IBM System z, and IBM Power Systems. HMC supports command line (ssh) as well as web ...

IBM mainframe technology