Planning for the IBM AIX Dynamic System Optimizer

There are some considerations when planning to install AIX® Dynamic System Optimizer.

When preparing to install AIX Dynamic System Optimizer, consider the following requirements:
  • The ASO daemon is started at boot time, but it is inactive by default. It can be activated by using the asoo command.
  • ASO is supported on the following versions of the AIX operating system and POWER processors:
    AIX version POWER processor
    IBM® AIX 7 with Technology Level 1 Service Pack 1, or later POWER7®
    IBM AIX 7 with Technology Level 1 Service Pack 7,or later POWER8®
    IBM AIX 7 with Technology Level 5, or later POWER9
  • Various optimizations are supported at different operating system levels:
    • Minimum level for the cache affinity optimization and the memory affinity optimization is IBM AIX 7.1 with Technology Level 1 service pack 1 or IBM AIX 6.1 with Technology Level 8.
    • The large page and data stream prefetch optimizations require the AIX Dynamic System Optimizer package (dso.aso) that is supported on IBM AIX 7.1 with Technology Level 2 service pack 1 and IBM AIX 6.1 with Technology Level 8 service pack 1.
    • Minimum level for POWER8 support is IBM AIX 7.1 Technology Level 4 service pack 2, or IBM AIX 7.2 service pack 2.
  • Running ASO in a dedicated processor environment requires that Virtual Processor Management (core folding) is disabled, which is the default setting. Enabling Power® Management on the Hardware Management Console (HMC) enables Virtual Processor Management to be started in a dedicated environment and disables ASO.
  • Enabling Active Memory Sharing disables all of the optimizations except the data stream prefetch optimization.
  • When processor resources are capped in a shared processor LPAR (SPLPAR) environment, the system entitlement must be a minimum of two cores. The entitlement for each virtual processor must be high enough to ensure that ASO can optimize the workload.
  • For large page optimization, the system must have a minimum of 16 GB of system memory.