Power7 System Firmware

New Features and Functions

• Support was added for a new Smart Analytics system, 8493-SV6. The IBM 8493 Smart Analytics System model SV6 is derived from the Power 740 model 8205-E6D.
  

• A firmware code update problem was fixed that caused a system failure with SRC B7000103 when the allowed resource usage was exceeded for the partition universal unique identifier (UUID) processing during a code update.
• A firmware code update problem was fixed that caused the Hardware Management Console (HMC) to go to "Incomplete State" for the system with SRC E302F880 when assignment of a partition universal unique identifier (UUID) failed for a partition that was already running.  This problem happens for disruptive code updates from pre-770 levels to 770 or later levels.
  

New Features and Functions

• Support was added to upgrade the service processor to openssl version 1.0.1 and for compliance to National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST) Special Publications 800-131a.  SP800-131a compliance required the use of stronger cryptographic keys and more robust cryptographic algorithms.
• Support was added in Advanced System Management Interface (ASMI) to facilitate capture and reporting of debug data for system performance problems.  The  "System Service Aids/Performance Dump" menu was added to ASMI to perform this function.
• Support was added to the Advanced System Management Interface (ASMI) to provide a menu for "Power Supply Idle Mode".  Using the "Power Supply Idle Mode"  menu, the power supplies can be either set enabled to save power by idling power supplies when possible or set disabled to keep all power supplies fully on and allow a balanced load to be maintained on the power distribution units (PDUs) of the system.  Power supply idle mode enabled helps to reduce overall power usage when the system load is very light by having one power supply deliver all the power while the second power supply is maintained in a low power state.
• Support was added to the Advanced System Management Interface (ASMI) to provide a menu for "Memory Low Power State Control" to enable or disable the custom memory buffer low power mode.  If set to disabled, it disables low power mode (a power-saving feature) to speed memory and improve performance for some workloads.  The "Memory Low Power State Control" menu is not available on the MTM 9117-MMC system because its memory does not have a low power state option.
• Support was added for the IBM Flash 90 (#ES09) PCIe 2.0 x8 eMLC adapter with 900GB storage and 350,00 IOPS read performance.  The system recognizes the PCI device as one needing additional cooling and increases the fan speeds accordingly.
• Support was added in Advanced System Management Interface (ASMI) for saving and restoring network settings using a USB flash drive.
• Support was dropped for Secured Socket Layer (SSL) protocol version 2 and SSL weak and medium cipher suites in the service processor web server (Lighttpd) .  Unsupported web browser connections to the Advanced System Management Interface (ASMI) secured port 443 (using https://) will now be rejected if those browsers do not support SSL version 3.  Supported web browsers for Power7 ASMI are Netscape (version 9.0.0.4), Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 7.0), Mozilla Firefox (version 2.0.0.11), and Opera (version 9.24).
• Support was added in Advanced System Management Interface (ASMI) "System Configuration/Firmware Update Policy" menu to detect and display the appropriate Firmware Update Policy (depending on whether system is HMC managed) instead of requiring the user to select the Firmware Update Policy.  The menu also displays the "Minimum Code Level Supported" value.
  

• The firmware was enhanced to display on the management console the correct number of concurrent live partition mobility (LPM) operations that is supported.
• A problem was fixed that caused a 1000911E platform event log (PEL) to be marked as not call home.  The PEL is now a call home to allow for correction.  This PEL is logged when the hypervisor has changed the Machine Type Model Serial Number (MTMS) of an external enclosure to UTMP.xxx.xxxx because it cannot read the vital product data (VPD), or the VPD has invalid characters, or if the MTMS is a duplicate to another enclosure.
• When powering on a system partition, a problem was fixed that caused the partition universal unique identifier (UUID) to not get assigned, causing a B2006010 SRC in the error log.
• For the sequence of a reboot of a system partition followed immediately by a power off of the partition, a problem was fixed where the hypervisor virtual service processor (VSP) incorrectly retained locks for the powered off partition, causing the CEC to go into recovery state during the next power on attempt.
• A problem was fixed that caused the system attention LED to be lit without a corresponding SRC and error log for the event.  This problem typically occurs when an operating system on a partition terminates abnormally.
• A problem was fixed that caused a memory leak of 50 bytes of service processor memory for every call home operation.  This could potentially cause an out of memory condition for the service processor when running over an extended period of time without a reset.
• A problem was fixed that caused a L2 cache error to not guard out the faulty processor, allowing the system to checkstop again on an error to the same faulty processor.
• A problem was fixed that caused a HMC code update failure for the FSP on the accept operation with SRC B1811402 or FSP is unable to boot on the updated side.
• A problem was fixed that caused a built-in self test (BIST) for GX slots to create corrupt error log values that core dumped the service processor with a B18187DA.  The corruption was caused by a failure to initialize the BIST array to 0 before starting the tests.
• A problem was fixed that caused a SRC B7006A72 calling out the adapter and the I/O Planar.
• A problem was fixed during resource dump processing that caused a read of an invalid system memory address and a SRC B181C141.  The invalid memory reference resulted from the service processor incorrectly referencing memory that had been relocated by the hypervisor.
  

• On systems running AIX or Linux, a problem was fixed that caused the operating system to halt when an InfiniBand Host Channel Adapter (HCA) adapter fails or malfunctions.
• On systems running AIX or linux, a hang in a Live Partition Mobility (LPM) migration for remote restart-capable partitions was fixed by adding a time-out for the required paging space to become available.  If after five minutes the required paging space is not available, the start migration command returns a error code of 0x40000042 (PagingSpaceNotReady) to the management console.
• On systems running Dynamic Platform Optimizer (DPO) with no free memory,  a problem was fixed that caused the Hardware Management System (HMC) lsmemopt command to report the wrong status of completed with no partitions affected.  It should have indicated that DPO failed due to insufficient free memory.  DPO can only run when there is free memory in the system.
• On systems with partitions using physical shared processor pools, a problem was fix that caused partition hangs if the shared processor pool was reduced to a single processor.
• On systems with a ethernet PCI-Express adapter under a PLX switch, an extended error handling (EEH) problem was fixed in run-time abstraction services (RTAS)  that caused fundamental resets of the adapter to fail during error recovery, leaving the adapter in a non-pingable state and off the network.  Besides failure to ping, the other symptom is that an AIX OS command of "enstat -d entX" where X is the adapter number will fail with the following message:  "enstat -0909-004, Unable to get statistics on device entX, errno=11".
• On systems with a F/C 5802 or 5877 I/O drawer installed, the firmware was enhanced to guarantee that an SRC will be generated when there is a power supply voltage fault.  If no SRC is generated, a loss of power redundancy may not be detected, which can lead to a drawer crash if the other power supply goes down.  This also fixes a problem that causes an 8 GB Fiber channel adapter in the drawer to fail if the 12V level fails in one Offline Converter Assembly (OCA).
• On systems managed by an HMC with a F/C 5802 or 5877 I/O drawer installed, a problem was fixed that caused the hardware topology on the management console for the managed system to show "null" instead of "operational" for the affected I/O drawers.
• On Power7+ systems,  a problem was fixed that caused a system checkstop during hypervisor time keeping services.
• On systems with a F/C 5802 or 5877 I/O drawer installed, a problem was fixed that where a Offline Converter Assembly (OCA) fault would appear to persist after a OCA micro-reset or OCA replacement.  The fault bit reported to the OS may not be cleared, indicating a fault still exists in the I/O drawer after it has been repaired.
  

System firmware changes that affect all systems

• A problem was fixed that caused a migrated partition to reboot during transfer to a VIOS 2.2.2.0, and later, target system. A manual reboot would be required if transferred to a target system running an earlier VIOS release. Migration recovery may also be necessary.
• A problem was fixed that can cause  Anchor (VPD) card corruption and  A70047xx SRCs to be logged.  Note: If a serviceable event  with SRC A7004715 is present or was logged previously, damage to the VPD card may have occurred. After the fix is applied, replacement of the Anchor VPD  card is recommended in order to restored full redundancy. 
  

• On systems running Dynamic Platform Optimizer (DPO) ,  a problem was fixed that caused an incorrect placement of dedicated processors for partitions larger than a single chip.  When this occurs, the performance is impacted over what would have been gained with proper placement.

New Features and Functions

• Support for the 8268-E1D systems.

• A problem was fixed that caused a service processor reset/reload with SRC B181720D due to a memory leak.
• The Hypervisor was enhanced to allow the system to continue to boot using the redundant data chip on the anchor (VPD) card, instead of stopping the Hypervisor boot and logging SRC B7004715,  when the primary data chip on the anchor card has been corrupted.
• A problem was fixed that caused a service processor dump to be generated with SRC B18187DA "NETC_RECV_ER" logged.
• A problem was fixed that caused the date and time to be incorrect in AIX if a partition is remotely restarted on a different system from the one on which it was hibernated.
  
• A problem was fixed that caused a performance loss after a configuration change, such as un-licensing a processor, because the Hypervisor is unable to dispatch a partition to a shared processor.
• A problem was fixed that may cause inaccurate processor utilization reporting.
  

• On systems running Active Memory Sharing (AMS) partitions, a problem was fixed that caused the system to hang after an AMS partition was deleted or mobilized, combined with either an AMS pool resize or relocation of AMS pool memory.
• On systems with I/O towers attached, a problem was fixed that caused multiple service processor reset/reloads if the tower was continuously sending invalid System Power Control Network (SPCN) status data.
• On 8202-E4D and 8205-E6D systems with the PCIe expansion card feature code (F/C) 5610 or F/C 5685 installed, a problem was fixed that caused the wrong FRU part number (74Y8565 instead of 74Y5221) to be called out when the fan on the expansion card failed.
• On systems managed by a management console, a problem was fixed that was caused by an attempt to modify a virtual adapter from the management console command line when the command specifies it is an Ethernet adapter, but the virtual ID specified is for an adapter type other than Ethernet.  The managed system has to be rebooted to restore communications with the management console when this problem occurs; SRC B7000602 is also logged.
• On systems running Dynamic Platform Optimization (DPO), a problem was fixed that caused the current DPO score for a partition to be incorrect.  When this occurs, it looks like DPO would not improve performance when in fact it would improve the performance.  Also, on systems running Dynamic Platform Optimization (DPO), in which there are no processors in the shared processor pool, a problem was fixed that caused the Hypervisor to become unresponsive (the service processor starts logging time-out errors against the Hypervisor, and the HMC can no longer talk to the Hypervisor) during a DPO operation.
  

• On systems running Active Memory Sharing (AMS) partitions, a problem was fixed that caused the system to hang after an AMS partition was deleted or mobilized, combined with either an AMS pool resize or relocation of AMS pool memory.
• On systems running Active Memory Sharing (AMS) partitions, a problem was fixed that may arise due to the incorrect handling of a return code in an error path during the logical partition migration (LPM) of an AMS partition.
• On systems running Active Memory Sharing (AMS) partitions, a timing problem was fixed that may occur if the system is running Dynamic Platform Optimization (DPO).
  

New Features and Functions

• Support for the 8202-E4D and 8205-E6D systems.
• Support for the 8231-E1D and 8231-E2D systems.
• Support for the 8246-L1D, 8246-L2D, 8246-L1T, and 8246-L2T systems.
• Support for version 2 of the EnergyStar standard.