Modes of operation for Workload Manager

WLM can be used to regulate resource consumption as per-class percentages, per-class totals, or per-process totals. Regulation for all resource types can be enabled by running WLM in active mode.

Optionally, you can start a mode of WLM that classifies new and existing processes and monitors the resource usage of the various classes, without attempting to regulate this usage. This mode is called the passive mode.

The passive mode can be used when configuring WLM on a new system to verify the classification and assignment rules, and to establish a base line of resource utilization for the various classes when WLM does not regulate the processor and memory allocation. This should give a basis for system administrators to decide how to apply the resource shares and resource limits (if needed) to favor critical applications and restrict less important work in order to meet their business goals.

If processor time is the only resource that you are interested in regulating, you can choose to run WLM in active mode for processor and passive mode for all other resources. This mode is called cpu only mode. If you want to regulate per-class percentages, but neither of the total resource types, the total resource accounting and regulation can be disabled for per-class totals, per-process totals, or both. In all modes, you have the option of disabling resource set binding.