IBM System p5 Enterprise Server

Reviving an IBM System p5 520 enterprise server from 2006.

Fan repair supplies:

00:00 Intro
01:06 Physical Overview
06:36 System p Series History
07:54 Remote Management Overview (FSP and ASMI)
09:05 Hardware Management Console Overview (HMC)
10:06 Getting Connected via Serial Cable
13:09 Pulling the FSP and Fans
13:42 Resetting the FSP Password
14:02 Fan Bearing Repairs
16:50 Front Control Console
18:20 Accessing the Machine
18:58 Advanced System Management Interface
21:03 Setting up a Hard Drive
26:13 AIX Installer
27:04 Closing Thoughts

Rack stuff

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Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio

[TheJonathanc]

I ran these servers in the financial services industry for over a decade. They are built like tanks and are rock solid. The last model I was running was a P9 before I moved to an organization that no longer used them.

[georgeh]

I worked on these systems for years, until around the time this machine came out. If you can get a working HMC, you can do some cool things. You can split up your machine into LPARs (logical partitions) which are sort of like virtual machines but run on the hardware via a hypervisor instead of software translation. You can then split up your resources, like tenths of a CPU to each LPAR. Not much to split up, however with only two CPU cores. This video brings back a lot of memories. Some of the earlier high-end rack-mounted RS/6000 systems took about 45 minutes to boot to the SMS prompt, then you had to be there to hit the key to get into SMS so you could install the AIX OS. That was painful.

[madfbar]

AHHH the memories. I worked on these boxes for 28 years, retired last year. You have earned a follow.

[FHDK]

IBM-POWER wow, I love it! Thanks. This non-s86/x64 CPU architecture is quite unique. Still alive with new products after so many years, whereas MIPS and SPARC have disappeared from the server market. 30 years after, IBM-POWER is still alive today, with POWER-10, that's very impressive.

[Atarian]

You aren't helping disuade me from picking up some old enterprise equipment for the home lab.

But i dont have a home lab at all! Living vicariously through you haha

[Afsafs]

That system just looks so slick. I know enterprise gear usually doesn't get a ton of love, but youve gotta admit that IBM made some darn attractive machines.

[gorak]

The downside to these proprietary enterprise servers is they're built to be about as user unfriendly as possible - unobtanium interposers for disks, arcane menus on the display that are in numbers instead of text, other similar proprietary stuff. That way the customers are supposed to buy the yearly service contract and let IBM take care of all that "hard stuff". Pretty sure they make more money off the service contracts than they do off of initially selling the machine.

[tommymadlabs]

Welcome in the magic world of IBM-I platform (formerly known as AS/400, eSeries, Pseries, Power, Power-i). I ran that system from 16 years! The 5.25 bay is for tape backup unit. Fiber channel normally will be used for a SAN (most machine is diskless). Thanks for this time travel

[johnmerryman]

Love the old enterprise gear! And cool to see you getting this stuff actually working.

[betaradish]

Gotta love enterprise stuff. It’s over engineered but super simple to understand.

[Hopgop]

I love this stuff and I don’t really know why, I’m not old enough to have worked with this stuff.
The videos are super well done, audio levels are lovely and even, and you shoot really well. Keep it up, I love these videos.

[djtomoy]

That web interface hasn’t aged a day, what a beauty to behold!!!🥰

[andie-retro]

The SCA to SCSI-50/SCSI-68 pin card that you use requires external power with that molex connector on the card. It supplies power to the hard drive so that it can be seen. I have one of them in my 43P-150 to connect a SCA hard disk to the 68pin UltraWide SCSI channel in that machine.
Those POWER5 machines were until recently the backbone of the FAA EnRoute system (ERAM). They have been replaced in the past few years with HPE Proliants running RHEL. Those P5s were used as deskside machines for air traffic controllers and the backend servers.

[simon]

Yess! A perfect saturday evening with some clabretro and old IBM servers :)

[keraptus]

For such a small channel you make great videos!

[xlrr]

Your channel is becoming one of my favourites. Nice niche, enterprise hardware from the late 90s and early noughties.

[EnronnSierra]

Always like learning about these type of server hardware, never been exposed to one except seeing their ads in my dad's Business Week or The Economists magazines. Seeing how you get it up and running is fascinating.

[ConnerWithAnE_]

Just found your channel a few days ago and can now proudly say I’ve binge watched all your videos. Amazing content, been having a blast watching it. People are probably tired of hearing me talk about your channel hahaha

[Matt-oqjq]

logg, logg, it's better than bad; it's good! everyone wants a logg, you're gonna love it, logg

[scottanderson]

Your content is great my man, really looking forward to this IBM hardware.