Memory ­ 256 MB of memory Disk storage ­ One virtual storage adapter (vscsi) for virtual I/O or one physical IOA for native I/O ­ Approximately 1 GB of disk storage Network interface ­ One virtual ethernet adapter for virtual I/O or one physical NIC (Network Interface Card) for native I/O Note: In addition to these minimum hardware requirements, you also need to apply all critical fixes and updates for the HMC, firmware, and i5/OS. 2.7 Planning for VPM Virtual Partition Manager (VPM) is for simple Linux configurations. You can create up to five LPAR partitions where you can have a maximum of one i5/OS partition and up to four Linux partitions without HMC. VPM leverages i5/OS's DST-like interfaces, that is, 5250 command-line interfaces, which does not require the investment in an HMC. Table 2-7 summarizes the functions and limitation of VMP compared to HMC. Table 2-7 VPM and HMC comparison