Hi Bakunin you and KGB are giving me plenty of insights here, just wanted to say thanks in advance..
in a nutshell, we have an 8202 with 6 internal 146GB drives, 128GB RAM, 6CPUs, PowerVM 'standard' licensing,4 internal NICs, plus two disk enclosures( g30,d24) that we cannot power-on yet,because we don't ( yet) have adequate power (210v line).electricians will be here in a week or 2 to install the new power lines.
I'm hoping to install at least 2 VMs on the 6 internal drives on the 8202, and use them for now. is this possible or do I just have to wait for the power to be installed for enclosures, first? we have a client that uses aix 6.1 with sybase 15.7 and we're trying to replicate that here so we can go forward with our sybase runtime building and testing of our S/w in this environment.

I'm familiar with AIX,linux,hp-ux,solaris, vmware esxi 4,5,6,etc. you mentioned that powerVM is really at the hardware level as opposed to having an OS installed, but I think you mean like what the older VmWare used to be , a VmWare server ( service) installed on top or linux or Windows OS.esxi is a 60MB 'bare metal' os that can run off of a USB drive leaving all disks accessible to a raid array,etc.from your info, I really see no difference between VIOS and esxi.it's basically a small OS that gives out resources to VMs,am I right?

due to Sybase's strict and costly licensing, we can only use 1 CPU for dev, anything more than that and the price goes through the roof. so, we're trying to config the first VM with 32GB RAM, 1 CPU and only 1 ( MAX=1). I can create that VM in my sleep. using a profile, I add scsi adapter, ethernet, configure the CPU and memory,etc.it works without a problem.
It's when I begin to make VM #2 that I really run in to a problem..I can configure #2 with an identical profile, give it ethernet, scsi adapter,etc..only real difference is this VM gets 2 CPU because it will not house a sybase installation, it is a testing VM.also gets 32GB RAM..everything goes swimmingly well until I get to the SMS menu and try to configure the boot device, no matter what I do , it says not scsi devices found.this means it can't see dvd, disk,etc.it's just basically an OS shell booted to BIOS..it's like a laptop without a harddrive and DVD.
so I've rebooted the server via ASMI power on/off countless times.I've even selected 'factory default install' which reverts the system back to a single LPAR, AIX 7 or 7.1, which owns all system resources.I can change these to smaller CPU and RAM footprint down from 6 CPU and 128GB RAM to ,say, 1CPU and 4GB ram.I can even delete this partition which I've done a number of times. I just can't create VM #2.coincidentally,when creating #2, if I shutdown #1, I can then give #2 access to the resources,and it'll now see all disks,dvds,etc when I boot to SMS.. so really one VM keeps all resources for itself,and unless it's powered off I cannot grant those resources to a 2nd VM.

yes, I have a very basic understanding of IBMs powerVM structure..it's all Greek to me. frankly, I find it absolutely bizarre and so different compared to everything else that I can't wrap my head around it.at times, I've seen on the HMC, 'create partition' link.most other times, it is not there. how/why would a link appear/disappear like that? it's like a funhouse loaded with wavy mirrors and illusions.. I have the PowerVM code VET installed.I've done that countless times ,too..

when I run installios -u it says it can't continue because the entry for default1 exists in the config file..I can't manually delete it because I can't get root access inside the limited terminal.. when I run installios ( no -u flag) , it says 'the following types of managed system were found, 1. Server-8202-E4B-SN066C39P Enter a number: 1 Error: installios no objects of type "virtual I/O server partition found'.

so why would they give you a 'limited' or 'restricted' shell , anyways? you can't even edit a file.

I'm a dog chasing his tail at this point.

the sales team from the vendor we purchased the server from is scheduling a consultant to come out at some point..nothing set just yet. I'd really like to do this on my own,it's the only way I'm going to learn this technology. it's what I have done with everything else that I work on. but I'm likely headed for an IBM weeklong classroom training session in June ( nothing available until then).

I've even installed VIOS from the serial connection via laptop onto the 8202. go to HMC to get in to the console,and it just says 'cant do io hosting without a hosting partition'. or, worse, a panic error code while booting, dropping me to OK prompt. so clearly I'm doing something very wrong.and the documentation hasn't been very helpful.. I never thought making two very basic VMs would require so much 'planning' and configuration..