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Java on AIX Tuning Tool for Power & a Whitepaper for Java on Power7
I just noted two great new things to help those running Java on AIX and it seems hard to avoid Java these days! I was just monitoring a customer machine with 1500 WebSphere Application Servers (WAS) each with 100 to 150 threads so roughly 200,000 threads!!! More impressing was that just 20 Power7 physical CPUs was supporting this workload. So here are two things that can help: 1. Java Performance Advisor (JPA) Available for download to anyone on IBM DeveloperWorks website. This is a powerful new tool to help people identify opportunities to... [More]
Tags: java and whitepaper tuning power6 tool on power7 aix best practice |
Systems Director Management Console (SDMC) Redbook - get yours now
The SDMC Redbook is available now - actually on the announcement date - so some one was planning ahead! IBM Systems Director Management Console: Introduction and Overview , SG24-7860-00 http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247860.html 6.9 MB and 430 pages
Tags: power "power sdmc aix hmc power7 systems" |
PowerVM Virtual I/O Server - Recommended Levels
While I was installing a re-purposed POWER6 machine over the weekend, got round to installing my Dual Virtual I/O Servers, from DVD and then upgrading from there and I noticed a new service pack 2 for the latest VIOS version. It must have sneaked out without me noticing and there is a Interim fix too. The VIOS 2.2.0.12-FP24 SP2 Readme highlights lots of fixes including some for the Shared Storage Pool feature. A feature that I have been using and talking about (see this blog for more information). This got me thinking! I talk to lots... [More]
Tags: power7 aix vios server i/o levels power powervm virtual recommended |
Local, Near & Far POWER7 Affinity Nine Conclusions
I thought I should summarise the long eleven part Local, Near & Far POWER7 Affinity series. 1) Placement: Find out the layout of your boxes CPU and RAM and if the RAM is evenly distributed across available DIMMs Find out the placement of your Virtual Machines (LPARs) with lssrad -av - or - topas -M 2) SMT4 : Expect POWER7 SMT4 CPU use to “look” different POWER5 & 6 have two equal threads POWER7 shuts down threads 3 & 4 and even thread 2 - when there is not enough processes running. 3) Entitlement : Only set minimum Entitlements,... [More]
Tags: entitlement processor power7 virtual systems power lpar hypervisor aix firmware powervm |
Local, Near & Far Memory part 8 - Dynamic LPAR changes can mess up your placement
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: vm placement aix processor power7 virtual cpu dlpar power6 entitlement ram lmb lpar powervm |
Updating to VIOS 2.2.0.10 FixPack 24 SP1? - Don't Make My Mistakes
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: systems power7 vios power aix |
VIOS Shared Storage Pools - Reusing Disks
I am using the VIOS Shared Storage Pools more these days and it reduces my system admin time and I really like the Thin Provisioning feature as I have limited SAN disks. Any way, I dusted off an machine that I did my initial investigation on and decided to rebuilt the cluster (of one VIOS) now that I know what I am doing :-) The command : cluster -create -clustername galaxy -repopvs hdisk2 -spname atlantic -sppvs hdisk3 hdisk4 hdisk5 -hostname diamondvios1 fails with "PV IS IN USE hdisk4". PV meaning Physical Volume. Yes,... [More]
Tags: vios pools reusing disks power7 cluster disk clean shared storage aix power6 |
URGENT: Recent AIX 6 & AIX 7 Day Light Saving Time Fix for this weekend
Many countries switch to Daylight Saving Time (DST) next weekend March 25th - unfortunately you may need to apply a fix to AIX 6 and AIX 7 before the change or programs can get inconsistent time from various time function and systems calls. This could have a major impact on many tools, for example, make, logs and databases ... well just about anything that uses a time value. There was an earlier temporary fix available but now there is a fully details final fix. Please got to the bellow website for all the details :... [More]
Tags: dst saving olson 7 light reboot efix day fix time aix 6 posix & |
Hints &Tips for Systems Director 6.2+ for AIX on POWER (Part 1)
I am preparing sessions for a POWER/AIX Technical Conference in Norway - unfortunately the only place they could book for the event was a Ski Resort up in the mountains and there is still good snow. It is a tough gig but someone has to do it :-) As part of that conference, I am updating them on Systems Director and demonstrating it. I had a slide with these hints and tips. A slide with zero percent marks for style (far to many words and just a long list) and I thought ... I should share these with everyone, so here they are. Most of these are... [More]
Tags: power vios endpoint server aix power7 nim systems director |
Local, Nar & Far Memory part 6 - Too High a Virtual Processor number has a Bad Side Effect
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: power7 power6 processor powervm entitlement virtual aix |
Virtual Fibre Channel for NPIV Requires Memory too!
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: adapters power7 thumb power virtual rule of npiv aix |
Firefox on AIX to download directly to AIX
I am currently updating my AIX systems and AIX 7 TL2 with its first service pack is now available for download from ESS or IBM Entitlem Software Support to spell it out in full (http://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/ess) for install media and FixCentral for updates (http://www-933.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/). While downloading the install media files I noticed there is a new Firefox for AIX available Firefox V3.6.25. This is a jump up from the previous one and I have had (in the past) a few annoying problems with Firefox on AIX Some weird issue... [More]
Tags: on power7 source aix firefox installp open |
Shared Storage Pools (SSP3) and Disaster Recovery in 30 seconds
Shared Storage Pools - just got even more interesting ! SSP Clusters with disks pools and super fast disk allocation VIOS Shared Storage Pools (phase 3) allows 16 VIOS on different machines to operate as a VIOS cluster with a set of SAN LUNs in the pool - think in terms of a number of TBs of disk space in the pool. The VIOS systems administrator can then allocate disk space to a new or existing Virtual Machine (LPAR) in around a second which can be thin or thick provisioning regardless of the underlying disks. This drastically reduces the... [More]
Tags: storage recovery pools power7 crash vios power disaster shared ssp3 aix |
FAQ2: Analyzing Large Volumes of nmon Data
I regularly get asked a question like: I have 4 months of data from 25 machines and have to develop a Capacity Planning model to size these LPARs on to new machines but I am having problems with having so much data. What can you recommend? We need graphs of CPU compared to Entitlement CPU Physical CPU use Maximum real memory use Network MB/s Disk MB/s Disk IOPS Sometimes this data is needed as input in to the Workload Estimator tool or Server Consolidation tools. My standard response is: You now understand Performance Monitoring and... [More]
Tags: planning nmon linux analyser rrdtool nmon2rrd nmon2web capacity aix |
nmon - new online Physical CPU Graphs arrive for latest AIX 6.1
I have just upgraded my EMEA Power Systems Advanced Technical Support internal Wiki Apache Web-server to the very latest AIX level, which is AIX 6.1 Technology Level 6 Service Pack 5 or AIX6.1TL6sp5 for short! Then I noticed that the nmon at this AIX level has been updated - I worked the code for the internal prototype of this new feature some time ago and it has arrived in the official topas/nmon code at this release - C O O L . The latest release AIX 7.1 service pack has this new options too. The problem: As the numbers of CPU goes up with... [More]
Tags: nmon topas 6.1 physical cpu aix sp5 tl06 monitoring power7 power6 |
Whole Power Server + Virtual Server Monitoring - Part 2 via lpar2rrd
LPAR2RRD Briefly, Based on the same HMC data that Systems Director gathers is LPAR2RRD but it saves the data in the famous and excellent rrdtool database and graphing tools. This is a supported by the developer which is Pavel Hampl, IBM Czech republic, as a personal project tool and does a very good job. For more details and a sample website to look round see - AIX Wiki page for LPAR2RRD I note this is a sourceforge.net project now - See the above for a link to the project and code Cut from that AIX wiki page for the project here (all... [More]
Tags: power7 systems virtual monitoring server performance aix lpar2rrd lpar |
Shared Storage Pools 2 - Thin provisioning, monitoring free space + Alerts
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 alerts provisioning powervm and space vios free power7 thin aix |
Pictures of our ESP Power750/760 and EXP30 SSD Drawer
Our Advanced Technology Support, Europe team have had a few months secretly testing the Power 750/760 internally to IBM as part of the normal Early Ship Program which lets a few machine out of the development labs to be tested by others to gain feedback on the product, documentation, features and usability. I thought others would like to see a few pictures of the team and the equipment involved. Please note: This is an Early Ship Machine, so there are a few details like stickers and handle colours that may differ slightly from the final product... [More]
Tags: power750 power760 ibmi aix power7+ power7 |
Whole Power Server + Virtual Server Monitoring - Part 1 via Systems Director
I get email a few times a week like "Nigel, what do you recommend for getting a good view of what the whole Power Server is doing, what resources are free for reuse for further Virtual Machines and which Virtual Machines are busy" My detailed thoughts are on the DeveloperWorks AIX wiki here: AIX Other Performance Tools but it appears no one reads websites any more, so I thought I would blog a few examples by screen capture to illuminate what is available. My first Whole Power Server and Virtual Server view recommendation is Systems... [More]
Tags: server performance monitoring lpar virtual systems power7 power aix |
Local, Near & Far Memory part 4 - Aggressive Intelligent Threads
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 processor vp power7 power powervm intelligent threads aix logical aggressive |
