Promox on Linux@Power CPU - IBM Power System S822L?

[Konto Sieciowe]

Hi,
it looks like we might be having the option for accessing some older customer machines of IBM Power System S822L - https://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=ca&infotype=an&appname=iSource&supplier=897&letternum=ENUS114-066 with just medium specs like 512GB RAM, etc.

Now they are having some strange RedHat/KVM virtualization that looks a bit obsolete and also it requires an external KVM/VM on 3rd party machine to manage the VMs.

I'm aware that before that there was Ubuntu Server on them and since there is an official Debian port & support for this architecture - https://wiki.debian.org/ppc64el/Installation - I'm just asking you this:

Is there any way (manual, script, tutorial, etc.) how to take your sources from - https://git.proxmox.com/ and recompile them to generate the ppp64el arch port in order to create, host and maintain the ppp64el/PVE repository similar to this http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve bullseye pve-no-subscription somewhere in order to bring your great PVE project for the ppp64el platform that would also allow us to simply use it on the S822Ls like do on x86?

Please advise.

 

[LnxBil]

Is there any way (manual, script, tutorial, etc.) how to take your sources from - https://git.proxmox.com/ and recompile them to generate the ppp64el arch port in order to create, host and maintain the ppp64el/PVE repository similar to this http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve bullseye pve-no-subscription somewhere in order to bring your great PVE project for the ppp64el platform that would also allow us to simply use it on the S822Ls like do on x86?

I don't know if this is worth the hassle. Non-x64 architectures are VERY limited with respect to what you can do with them on Linux.

First, check if there is a Ubuntu LTS Kernel available for your architecture, which is the basis of Proxmox VE. If that is not available, you may already stop here.
Yet to get you started, just clone each git and try to build the packages in a Debian Bullseye environment and see what is missing and fix problems on the way as you go. I suppose you'll run into a lot of problems compiling the qemu-part, which is hardcoded to x86, but you may have not so much problems with LX(C) containers.

 

[Konto Sieciowe]

Well, the Ubuntus 16.04, 18.04 up to 20.40 LTS were officialy supported for the machines - https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/20.04/release/ - so all the LTS packages were there including kernels... just in 22.04 the Ubuntu page doesn't mention this CPU level anymore, but we could also try to get those current distro with kernels simply there or stick to PVE 6.x with LTS.20.40 otherwise.

The worrying part is the qemu part from your mail - while I've found that the QEMU should be working with PowerCPUs as a host - https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/about/build-platforms.html#supported-host-architectures (KVM) - and guests - https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/system/ppc/pseries.html pretty fine...

-> so does your comment means, that Proxmox development team has actually hardcoded some x86 tricks into the PVE software stack/packages or their provide modified qemu/kvm and there are the issues expected or I didn't get your point on that?

 

[LnxBil]

-> so does your comment means, that Proxmox development team has actually hardcoded some x86 tricks into the PVE software stack/packages or their provide modified qemu/kvm and there are the issues expected or I didn't get your point on that?

Yes, they did.

 

[alexskysilk]

Is there any way (manual, script, tutorial, etc.) how to take your sources from - https://git.proxmox.com/ and recompile them to generate the ppp64el arch port

I dont think this exists, but since all the code is available you're welcome to create your own. The better question is why? this is an almost 10 year old platform, which has terrible performance on code that isn't specifically optimized for power (8 threads/core; it was kinda its selling point.) with generic code the performance per watt would be atrocious- certainly compared to anything made recently. Even if it was free, you'd still need to provide power and cooling.

 

[Konto Sieciowe]

ok, thank you gents