The title should read "Local, Near & Far ..."  - I will not correct it or links might fail. In this entry we carry on from part 5 but we are going to look at setting the virtual processor number for the virtual machine . There is a side effect that is not obvious and after 6 years of using them, it never occurred to me so perhaps it is news to others too. The problem of virtual processors is that they are ephemeral - i.e. they don't actually exist and costs nothing.  So I find most systems administrators feel they can be generous... [More]

Tags:  powervm processor virtual power7 aix entitlement power6

After you have started and used your virtual machine (VM) for a while, you may decide to change its size using a Dynamic LPAR (DLPAR) change from the HMC (or SDMC or IVM, of course). This has virtual machine placement implications.  When shrinking your VM, the hypervisor will decide which CPU or memory (LBM) to release and it might not select what you think is the obvious choice.  When enlarging your VM, we might thing there is an obvious way to grow in a balanced way but we can't see: 1) where physically our virtual machine is placed in the... [More]

Tags:  ram placement processor power6 power7 dlpar powervm vm lpar entitlement virtual lmb cpu aix

Hi, I just release a fifth hands-on movie this month and on this interesting topic. You can find the movie here:  Shared Storage Pools 2 - Thin provisioning, monitoring free space + Alerts     Shared Storage Pool Thin provisioning is pretty cool and saves a lot of disk space . Effectively the 100's of GBs of unused disks space in 100's of Virtual Machines (LPARs) are bought together in one place in the Shared Storage Pool and then can be used for real.  All this without the use of clever disk subsystems.  The risk is that you use all the disk... [More]

Tags:  monitoring power7 space vios powervm thin provisioning alerts and free aix

This is a follow on from yesterdays blog due to Chris Gibson highlighting a question/concern from one of his customers in Australia.They were comparing Power6 and Power7 and the utilisation numbers from the SMT Logical Processors and the graphs look different. I looked at some nmon data (what else!) and yes they are looking different and then I ran a simple generated workload test and duplicated the graphs.  Below I then explain them - once again these are my personal observations rather than an official AIX developers insider statement.   I... [More]

Tags:  smt core powervm logical aix threads aggressive vp processor intelligent power7 power

Questions I have a number of customers asking me these types question: Are there are good practices on how to size disks for the storage pools. If I want a 5 TB pool, how many disks which size, does it matter ? Also are there any document limits regarding, pool disk, LUN and so on. Answers Not sure about best practice but there is common sense - will that do? Restrictions are included with the VIOS announcement "Read Me" notes, which you can find here for the current VIOS 2.2.1.3... [More]

Tags:  shared power size powervm vios storage pool lun

We all tend to concentrate on the CPU first and the memory second. CPUs, as the "brains" of the machine, does get a high focus and have a lot of extreme technology within it but the RAM is the "guts" of the machine to "feed" the CPU with nutrient data. OK, let us stop the analogy there :-)  Along with reducing the number of CPUs via a lower virtual processor count, we also need to have the CPUs matching the memory - so AIX has a fighting change to localise a running process to its home SRAD and thus have it's data... [More]

Tags:  entitlement lpar ram power7 vm placement virtual aix power6 cpu processor powervm lmb

Shared Storage Pools is the next big thing to owed systems admin time and boost flexibility  for Power Systems, PowerVM and controlling SAN disks from the VIOS and HMC.  I will not go on about SSP here but I particular like the fact Live Partition Mobility even with SAN disks is ready to go with SSP and there is no need to reZone the SAN disks.   To start using the new and improved SSP, you need the latest Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) - the version name is a nightmare! Who ever thought VIOS 2.2.1.3 FP25 SP01 with iFix was a sensible name for a... [More]

Tags:  power6 power7 aix powervm vios

So you have Discovered, given Access and run Inventory on your HMC and it is not finding the Servers and Virtual Servers that the HMC is connected too! What do you do next? Well here are a series of suggestions for you to try (this is not an official diagnostics path but might help you out): How much memory has your HMC got? I get people trying to use old HMCs and the original ones had just 1 GB of memory. This is basically not enough these days - in my humble opinion - unless you have just one machine! But how do you find out what you have?... [More]

Tags:  aix power7 powervm director hmc power6 systems

The title should read "Local, Near & Far ..."  - I will not correct it or links might fail.  With a shared processor virtual machine (I am calling this "VM" but was called LPAR!) there are various suggestions of setting Entitlement ("Desired processing units" on the LPAR profile on the HMC, I am calling this "E") and Virtual Processor numbers (I am calling this "VP"). For Capped, the Entitlement is the maximum guaranteed CPU time that you can't go over and you round up the Entitlement to the... [More]

Tags:  processor virtual powervm low aix power7 power6 entitlement

Here is another question from that larger Power 7 machine customer. They have large Virtual Machines (Logical Partitions) and can't see all the CPUs on the screen. This is made worst by Power 7 machines - not a problem with the processors or machines but there are: So many CPUs on larger machines like Power 770/780 and the mighty Power 795 Then the new Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) now means four threads per physical CPU (core). This means lots of physical CPUs and each has four logical CPUs.  So what happens on the screen - you see a... [More]

Tags:  nmon physical longer cpu power aix powervm term

Just completed the move of the POWER and AIX Hands-on Movies to YouTube videos - after pruning we have 97 of them. This means you can watch them on your mobile Smartphone and Tablets in addition to your workstation/personal computer. You can find them all here:   YouTube  look for my "Nigel Griffiths" Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/nigelargriffiths This should mean they are simpler to find, search for and view.   During the transfer I pruned out a few of the older ones particular Systems 6.2 as we now have a set of Systems... [More]

Tags:  systems youtube powersc power aix vidoes powervm director

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

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

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 versioned aix