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Question: Can one LPAR see the POWERVM internal network packets from another LPAR?
Another good questions from a customer and my answer was simple: The PowerVM internal network on POWER machines operates just like a physical network. If two LPAR are on the same internal network and the root user puts the virtual adapter in to promiscuous mode then it can see all packets. Just like a physical network. If the two LPARs are on different internal networks then they can never see the other LPARs packets. Just like two physical networks. If two LPAR are on the same internal network but on different VLANs then they can never see... [More]
Tags: vios virtual lpar power7 power network |
Adverts for Virtual User Groups - AIX and PowerVM
I highly recommend the AIX Virtual User Group run by Joe Armstrong that roughly has a hot topic Webinar session once a month. Typically, there is 300 to 700 online to the session, many include a demo and there are Slides and Replay downloadable if you miss one or look back over the previous 70 or more sessions and want an update. On the larger hot topics there are lots of questions and answers handled during the session. Officially, it is called the USA AIX Virtual User group but they take registrations from around the world but schedule for... [More]
Tags: aix power groups user - virtual powervm |
Don't miss out on the AIX Virtual User Group sessions & replays
I have been touring cities in Europe: Birmingham for the 4 day Technical University, Manchester, central London and Dublin for the Ask the Experts 1 day event and last week Copenhagen for a POWER & AIX User group Technical Event. I have had about 250 to 300 people in my sessions and asked every time - How knows about the AIX Virtual User Group and only had about 30 people put their hands up. I am amazed how few people have found this invaluable resource. The organiser, Joe Armstrong an IBMer, set-ups up roughly monthly world wide... [More]
Tags: user sessions virtual group aix replays |
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: lpar aix hypervisor entitlement processor systems firmware power power7 powervm virtual |
mpstat -d and the undocumented stats
I just realised that I got help from the AIX developers to explain the output of the mpstat -d command for my POWER7 and Affinity Technical University sessions in Miami and Copenhagen that I never passed on to every one. In an earlier blog we examined some mpstat columns but skipped others. The nearly undocumented mpstat stats are: S0rd, S1rd, S2rd, S3rd, S4rdand S5rd. In the AIX manuals it states: S0rd = The percentage of thread re-dispatches
within the scheduling affinity domain 0.
And likewise for the other numbers - but what does... [More]
Tags: cpu power7 affinity virtual physical logical |
Local, Near, Far part 10 - Final of the table by Model
Finally, I have the types of memory by POWER7 model double checked. I refreshed the table in part 1 but thought I should make sure every one sees the final version so I have not mislead people. Only the Power 770/780 and Power 797 have Near memory. All the smaller machine operate a Local memory meaning on the same same POWER7 chip and Far memory for any access to another POWER7 chip's memory.
Tags: local power7 far virtual cpu lpar memory affinity powervm near machine |
Local, Near & Far Memory part 9 - Firmware Updates
The Hypervisor makes the virtual machine (LPAR) placement decisions and changes during DLPAR. The Hypervisor is part of the Power Systems Firmware. The POWER7 machines first arrived in the early months of 2010. Since then we have had a lot of field experience with the larger machines with large configurations with large applications and tens of thousands of processes running and in particularly the machines with all three layers of memory - which are the Power 770, Power 780 and Power 795. From this experience, the POWER developers have... [More]
Tags: processor power7 cpu vm entitlement powervm virtual aix lpar placement |
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: ram processor placement power6 power7 powervm dlpar lpar vm entitlement virtual lmb cpu aix |
Local, Near & Far Memory part 7 - VM placement also needs RAM
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 |
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: powervm processor virtual power7 aix entitlement power6 |
Local, Nar & Far Memory part 5 - Low Entitlement has a Bad Side Effect
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 power7 aix low power6 entitlement |
PowerVM has multiple internal Virtual Ethernet Switches - Info please?
This is a follow on to a previous blog on " PowerVM Virtual Ethernet Speed is often confused with VIOS, SEA IVE/HEA speed "- here is a Direct Link I regularly get asked : "I have just heard about this [PowerVM virtual switch | vSwitch | Hypervisor Ethernet Switch] is available but I can't find out any information at all, help!" They are wanting to run two (or more) virtual switches within the one Power machine to completely separate the network packets of groups of virtual machines (LPARs) so they know for sure there can... [More]
Tags: vswitch switch hypervisor power6 power ethernet aix powervm power7 virtual |
PowerVM Virtual Ethernet Speed is often confused with VIOS, SEA IVE/HEA speed
Update in 2016: Please note this blog is from 2011 during the initial POWER7 days and technology has moved on with faster CPUs and memory in addition there has been software improvements. I am amazed how many good computer people read this and assume this blog is true to all time! Virtual Ethernet is faster now but there is also a warning here. Here is an analogy. Most vehicles can do 10 MPH (including me on a bike), most cars can do 100 MPH (including my family car) but very few vehicles can do 1000 MPH. That last times ten multiplier is... [More]
Tags: vios machine misunderstood power6 power7 aix virtual ethernet speed powervm |
AIX Virtual Processor Folding is Misunderstood
This mysterious AIX CPU Folding area is often misunderstood, so below is what I know from osmosis from talking to various guru level developers over the last 10 years. Shared Processor virtual machines (LPARs for the old fashioned) have a setting called Virtual Processors (or VP for short). This is the number of physical CPUs that the virtual machines can spread out across - in fact, I prefer to call it the "spreading factor" as it is much more obvious what it means. This can be the upper threshold for the number of CPUs that can be... [More]
Tags: power7 powervm power6 hypervisor aix folding aix6 aix7 virtual processor |
Rule of Thumb: Sizing the Virtual I/O Server
I often get asked: How large to make a pair of Virtual I/O Server (VIOS)? The classic consultant answer is "it depends on what you are doing with Disk & Network I/O" is not very useful to the practical guy that has to size a machine including the VIOS nor the person defining the VIOS partition to install it! Added new guidance at the bottom in RED Observations : The VIOS server unfairly gets a bad press but note: Physical adapters are now in the VIOS, so device driver CPU cycles (normally hidden and roughly half of the OS CPU... [More]
Tags: vios aix i/o sizing virtual power6 power7 server linux |
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 server vios recommended aix levels i/o virtual power powervm |
Whole Power Server + Virtual Server Monitoring - Part 3 via topas CEC analyser
We have all probably seen or used the topas CEC on-screen view (topas -C command). This is started while logged into one AIX Virtual Server (LPAR) and shows all the other AIX or VIOS (as it is based on AIX) Virtual Servers of a single Power Server. Here is a reminder - this is on-line, on-screen and updated every 10 seconds or so: Here my Virtual Servers are called purple<something> and below the top machine summary we have a line for each Virtual Server and stats like AIX release, memory use, CPU stats (PhysB is the Physical CPU time... [More]
Tags: power virtual server systems aix lpar power7 monitoring topas performance |
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: virtual lpar2rrd performance server aix power7 lpar monitoring systems |
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: systems power monitoring performance lpar virtual power7 server aix |
The LPAR term is dead - Long live the Virtual Server / Machine
I am not making a claim to fame (OK, I am really) but the UK Power Systems Advanced Technical Support group (that is me and Gareth) dropped the term "LPAR" or Logical Partition as a New Years resolution. We like to occasionally test to see if we can influence other IBMers and the IT Industry. We now in 2011 onwards use the terms: Virtual Server - this is the term used by Systems Director for over three years. While I can live with that name but the abbreviation of VS - it just does not feel or sound right. Virtual Machine - this... [More]
Tags: power server vm powervm virtual lpar power7 powersystems machine |
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: thumb power7 of rule npiv adapters aix power virtual |
