The official rPerf rating (relative performance rating of Power based machines) are available in the pSeries, System p and now Power Systems "Facts and Features" documents that are on the IBM website. It is best to use Google for them (searching for "pseries Facts and Features" works for me). You may want to know the rPerf rating for your LPAR and an LPAR that is not one of the officially rated numbers of CPUs/Cores.  There may be ratings for 8 and 16 CPUs but your LPAR has 13 CPUs! Well, you can run the rperf script on... [More]

Tags:  rperf power6 pwer4 aix power power7 power5

 Just a quick look at the features for AIX7 - which is coming soon. Take a look at AIX7 Preview for an official statement. The two major items for me are 1) Scaling to 256 cores (or CPUs as I have called them for 25 years) Power systems always had lower CPU counts than the competition particularly in the high end machines due to the faster speed of the processor and this benefits batch (single threaded) work, software costs (lower CPU numbers) and is easier for scaling up but now a truly massive POWER7 machine is near and AIX7 is the OS to run... [More]

Tags:  aix7 wpar aix6 power7

I was just asked this question by customer and it got me thinking, Items I would include: WPAR takes seconds to create and LPARs minutes LPARs need setting VIOS LV or LUNs but WPARs add simpler NFS mount points, or can just use Global AIX diskspace options LPAR needs 512 to 1GB to boot AIX and a WPAR takes just ~60 MB (yes sixty megabytes) You can share application code say 1 GB in each and every LPAR (40 LPAR = 40 GB) or just one shared read-only copy for all WPARs 40 WPAR = 1 GB).This saves man-power in maintenance, disk space AND memory (if... [More]

Tags:  power7 lpar aix7 aix wpar 5.2

 Just came across this good AIX wiki article about monitoring the POWER7 CPU/core frequency changing on the fly and the new lparstat command options ( -Ew). This allows you to see what is happening with your GHz (like pmcycles -M but collected regularly). This article is written by a guru in the AIX Performance Tools developers group. It explains how the utilisation numbers are adjusted to allow for GHz using the PURR and SPURR hardware counters built in the processor to get accurate CPU stats. Check it out here - CPU Frequency Monitoring using... [More]

Tags:  power7 aix purr lparstat spurr ghz

We needed to install AIX 5.2 in order to create a mksysb for AIX 7 Versioned WPAR testing - this allows you to run AIX 5.2 in a WPAR. First we had endless problems locating media but our Computer Room Manager Mike turned up trumps in the end - he keeps everything and regularly saves the day. So we loaded all 7 CDROMs on to our VIOS to add them to the virtual Optical Library. Second, we booted from the CDROM only to with an immediate halt with a warning the AIX 5.2 can't run in a Shared CPU LPAR - doh! we should have realised that one. It was a... [More]

Tags:  vwpar 2002 aix5.2 powervm power7 aix7

I just noticed the rPerfs (relative performance numbers) for the four new Entry Level systems (Power 710/720/730/740) and the High End Power 795 are available in the updated "Power Systems Facts and Features" document on the IBM website. My notes: The Entry Level machines are now 16 core/CPU/way (delete as you like to call them). That is a serious machine for the bottom end 2U rack server and it has all the POWER7 virtualisation features built in. These humble machines have the roughly the same performance as the mid-range previous... [More]

Tags:  power7 797 aix7 710 740 rperf 730 720

With AIX 7 and POWER7, you now have the option to run the old withdrawn AIX version 5.2 within a WPAR with this new offering - AIX 5.3 Workload Partitions for AIX 7, version 1.1 This will run the same AIX 5.2 OS, same middle-ware and same application but on right-up-to-date hardware and OS. Then you can remove the old POWER4 (or older hardware) to: Reduce electricity & heat, Free up floor or rack space, Reduce hardware maintenance or if you don't have it, reduce your risks, Plus either a performance boost due to POWER7 or reduced... [More]

Tags:  versioned aix7 power7 5.2 aix wpar

I am getting this question quite a lot and the answer is it depends on the model and when it was made available. These are the minimums but higher service packs are recommended . POWER7 Systems Power 750, 755 (Jan) Power 770,780 (March) Blade 700, 701,702 (June) Power 710, 720, 730, 740, 795 (Sept) AIX 5.3 TL9 SP7 SP7 - - AIX 5.3 TL10 SP4 SP4 SP5 SP5 AIX 5.3 TL11 SP2 SP2 SP5 SP5 AIX 5.3 TL12 * * * SP1 POWER7 Systems Power 750, 755 (Jan) Power 770,780 (March) Blade 700,... [More]

Tags:  6.1 710 750 pack technology 770 730 power7 795 level service 740 780 aix 5.2 720

Hi, I am preparing for a Power Systems Technical University in Las Vegas, USA and Lyon, France in October. I have a session with the title below and I am seeking feedback from technology guru's like yourselves. Which four of the below ten technologies do you think are "most likely to be normal in five years time"? Please comment on this AIXpert (see "Add a Comment" below) with your four top technologies. I will post the overall results as a graph in roughly two weeks time. Below here there should be a large image of the ten... [More]

Tags:  "systems solutions fcocee ghz ssd director" aem aix7 power7 vmcontrol "versioned ame wpar"

I've just told me this is now available from http://www.ibm.com/systems/support/tools/systemplanningtool/ Update to Version 4.10.323.0 (once you have 4.09.323 installed) OK, we have waited long enough so "hurray" its here at last. My colleague in Norway is going to use this to install a very large Power 795 in Norway next week. He is so happy because its going to save him hours and hours in setup time and will get it right first time.

Tags:  spt vios power7 power6 sizing aix

The new November Update is available from the download site from the regular website: http://www.ibm.com/systems/software/director/downloads/index.html When you have 6.2 or 6.2.0.1 installed get Systems Director to update itself - then update the plug-ins via the download site. There is lots of new features and quality improvements too. I will summarise these in a different blog entry. One quick note: if you are doing a fresh install - install DB2 as the database.

Tags:  aix power7 director vios power power6 systems ibmi

If you are migrating work from an older POWER5 or POWER6 machine/LPAR to POWER7 ... don't forget to check that those Java versions are compatible with POWER7 or you may hit "unexpected Java errors" The approved Java SDK on POWER7 are limited to particular versions with specific fixes . They can be found here: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/power7/index.html Harder to check are the Java versions which are embedded in applications. Here are two important ones for IBM software: There is a technical bulletin regarding... [More]

Tags:  java aix power power7 migration systems

We all know that a VIOS level is only fully supported for 2 years ... right!   If you have problems with an older VIOS, you may be asked to upgrade to a supported level before a fix can be issued.  Most teams run a dual VIOS configuration to allow painless and live upgrades for just this reason. The other reason is to survive a VIOS crash but I have never had a VIOS failure but that would be because I don't go fiddling with them nor adding unsupported software. I quickly upgraded my POWER7 VIOS from 2.1 to the latest VIOS level and made a... [More]

Tags:  power power7 systems aix vios

Finally, I found the time to try this new exciting feature and it was really simple to create and operate.  I captured movie footage of my first attempt and it all worked (once I removed my spelling mistakes in commands). It only took two commands.  So the technology has advanced concepts but it really easy to use, COOL!    Some of the commands come with long option names like "-custername". A quick misquote from Star-Trek, never goes wrong: "It is UNIX Jim, but not as we know it!" One command to create my cluster,... [More]

Tags:  power provioning pool powervm power6 shared nextgen vios thin storage aix power7

N-Port Id Virtualisation (NPIV) and virtual Fibre Channel adapters - like high speed physical adapters (see an earlier blog) do require memory to operator at full speed.  NPIV effectively turns the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) into a kind of virtual SAN switch where packets are passed through with no changes from the physical adapter to the client Virtual Machine (LPAR).  I found it very hard to find a recommendation in the documentation but was given a rule of thumb.  As before it should be noted that starving the VIOS and the Hypervisor of... [More]

Tags:  thumb power7 of rule npiv adapters aix power virtual

I have just released a second VIOS Shares Storage Pools movie that you may like to go and watch. We now have two movies covering first an Introduction (the new movie) and then second movie covering a hands-on look at setting it up and running it. There are also the example commands and the Info and download links. I am really liking the Shared Storage Pools simple operation, disk space saving and flexibility. I currently have just a tiny 40GB pool out of which I am running 6 Client Virtual Machine which each think that have 16 GBs. That is 96... [More]

Tags:  virtualization aix power6 virtualisation systems power7 vios power

We have blogged on this really cool AIX 7 feature in the past - but here is my problem: Once I install the AIX 5.2 mksysb image in to the Workload Partition running on AIX7 it all works fine but ... then what can I show an audience to show off "AIX 5.2 running on top of AIX 7": I need a simple application that only runs on AIX 5.2 . Something simple enough that it does not take hours to install and hopefully that it is something visually interesting to see. I am told we can run Oracle 8 now including the kernel extension but its not... [More]

Tags:  aix7 power7 wpar powervm aix versioned

I asked Scott about a Redbook for the new VIOS functions for Shared Storage Pools and he told me that chapters had already been added to the current PowerVM Redbooks. I almost fell of the chair!  I have been ignoring the regular Redbook update emails - but I guess I should pay more attention. So I took a look and found the Shared Storage Pools have chapters in two regular PowerVM Redbooks - note you have to download the most recent updates. IBM PowerVM Virtualization - Introduction and Configuration SG24-7940 IBM PowerVM Virtualization -... [More]

Tags:  aix powervm power7 power6 vios

That was a shock - right out of the blue, we are told HACMP (OK we should call it PowerHA SystemMirror but life is too short) now supports Versioned WPARs - I had customer questions on this earlier in the week but no idea it was about to be announced. We were recommending using HACMP at the AIX 7 level and treating the WAR as a very well controlled and isolated bunch of processes, file systems etc. as a single resource. But now its much simpler. Want to know more: Techdoc

Tags:  powerha hacmp wpar power7 aix