Micro-Partitioning technology

When you enable the Micro-Partitioning™ technology, you can configure multiple logical partitions to share the system's processing power.

All processors that are not dedicated to specific logical partitions are placed in the shared processor pool that is managed by the hypervisor. Logical partitions that are set to use shared processors can use the shared processor pool. You can set a logical partition that uses shared processors to use as little as 0.10 processing units, which is approximately one-tenth of the processing capacity of a single processor. You can specify the number of processing units to be used by a shared processor logical partition down to the hundredth of a processing unit. This ability to assign fractions of processing units to logical partitions and allowing logical partitions to share processing units is called the Micro-Partitioning technology.

The Micro-Partitioning technology allows for increased overall use of system resources by automatically applying only the required amount of processor resource needed by each logical partition. The hypervisor can automatically and continually adjust the amount of processing capacity allocated to each logical partition (with shared processors) based on system demand. You can set a shared processor logical partition so that, if the logical partition requires more processing capacity than its assigned number of processing units, the logical partition can use unused processing units from the shared processor pool.

The Micro-Partitioning technology is part of the PowerVM™ Editions (or Advanced POWER® Virtualization) hardware feature and is available on all POWER5™ and POWER6™ processor-based servers as follows:

• For IBM® System i® and IBM eServer™ i5 models with machine types 9406 and 9405, the PowerVM Editions feature is not required to use the Micro-Partitioning technology. The Micro-Partitioning technology is included with these models.
• For IBM System i models with machine type 9407, the PowerVM Editions feature is required to create logical partitions.
• For IBM System p®, IBM eServer p5, and IBM eServer OpenPower® servers, the PowerVM Standard Edition or the PowerVM Enterprise Edition is required to use the Micro-Partitioning technology.
• For BladeCenter® JS12 Express™ Express, BladeCenter JS22 Express Express, and IBM BladeCenter JS21 Express, the PowerVM Standard Edition, which includes the Micro-Partitioning technology, is packaged with the blade server. For more information about using the Micro-Partitioning technology on blade servers, see the IBM Systems Information Center.