System information

Chapter 10. Using the Advanced Systems Management Interface 315
Processor deconfiguration
Refer to Figure 10-55 to see how a processor might be deconfigured. You would select
whether each processor should remain configured or become deconfigured, and click the
Save settings button. State changes take effect on the next platform boot.
Memory deconfiguration
Most System i5 systems will have several megabytes (MB) of memory. Each memory bank
contains two DIMMs (dual inline memory module). If the firmware detects a failure, or
predictive failure, of a DIMM, it deconfigures the DIMM with the failure, as well as the other
one. All memory failures that stop the system, even if intermittent, are reported to the
authorized service provider as a diagnostic dial-out for a service repair action.
To prevent the recurrence of intermittent problems and improve the availability of the system
until a scheduled maintenance window can be found, memory banks with a failure history are
marked
deconfigured to prevent them from being configured on subsequent boots. Memory
banks marked as deconfigured remain offline and will be omitted from the system
configuration.
A memory bank is marked
deconfigured under the following circumstances:
򐂰 If a memory bank fails built-in self-test or power-on self-test testing during boot (as
determined by the service processor).
򐂰 If a memory bank causes a machine check or check stop during run time, and the failure
can be isolated specifically to that memory bank (as determined by the processor run-time
diagnostics in the service processor firmware).
򐂰 If a memory bank reaches a threshold of recovered failures that results in a predictive call
to the service provider (as determined by the processor run-time diagnostics in the service
processor firmware).
The deconfiguration policy also provides the user with the option to manually deconfigure a
memory bank or re-enable a previous manually deconfigured memory bank.
If you select the Memory Deconfiguration option from the Hardware Configuration sub-menu,
you will see a panel similar to the one shown in Figure 10-56 allowing you to view the total
memory installed on your system. From this panel you can select the Processing Unit (one or
more processing units may be shown) and click Continue to advance to the next panel.
A new panel similar to the one shown in Figure 10-57 is then displayed. You can then see any
Memory Banks that may have become deconfigured due to some error condition that the
system was able to detect and isolate. and the operational state of the memory blocks as
either configured or deconfigured.