IBM United States Hardware Announcement

try out the Shared Processor Pool. With its intuitive browser-based interface, IVM is easy to use and helps reduce the time and effort required to manage virtual devices, processors, and partitions. An HMC is not required.

Notes:

•PowerVM 2.1.2.11 with Fix Pack 22.1 and Service Pack 1, or later, and a supported AIX or Linux operating system level are minimum requirements for performing Live Partition Mobility functions on POWER7. Refer to the Software requirements section for more information on minimum AIX and Linux OS levels.

•Active Memory Sharing is planned to be supported with the availability of SLES 11 SP1.

Customers can upgrade from PowerVM Express to either PowerVM Standard or PowerVM Enterprise, or they can upgrade from PowerVM Standard to PowerVM Enterprise.

By upgrading to PowerVM Standard or PowerVM Enterprise, users gain the ability to create up to 160 logical partitions on the Power System 750. Users also gain the ability to manage their PowerVM enabled machine with either an HMC or the Integrated Virtualization Manager.

By upgrading to PowerVM Enterprise, users can leverage Live Partition Mobility and Active Memory Sharing.

Active Memory Expansion (optional)

Active Memory Expansion is an innovative POWER7 technology that allows the effective maximum memory capacity to be much larger than the true physical memory maximum. Sophisticated compression/decompression of memory content can allow memory expansion up to 100%. This can allow a partition to do significantly more work or support more users with the same physical amount of memory. Similarly, it can allow a server to run more partitions and do more work for the same physical amount of memory.

Active Memory Expansion is available for partitions running AIX 6.1, or later. Technology Level 4 with SP2 is needed.

Active Memory Expansion uses CPU resource to compress/decompress the memory contents. The trade-off of memory capacity for processor cycles can be an excellent choice, but the degree of expansion varies, depending on how compressible the memory content is, and it also depends on having adequate spare CPU capacity available for this compression/decompression. Tests in IBM laboratories using sample workloads showed excellent results for many workloads in terms of memory expansion per additional CPU utilized. Other test workloads had more modest results.

Clients have a great deal of control over Active Memory Expansion usage. Each individual AIX partition can turn on or turn off Active Memory Expansion. Control parameters set the amount of expansion desired in each partition to help control the amount of CPU used by the Active Memory Expansion function. An IPL is required for the specific partition that is turning memory expansion on or off. Once turned on, there are monitoring capabilities in standard AIX performance tools such as lparstat, vmstat, topas, and svmon.

A planning tool is included with AIX 6.1 TL4, allowing you to sample actual workloads and estimate both how expandable the partition's memory is and how much CPU resource is needed. Any Power Systems model can run the planning tool. In addition, a one-time, 60-day trial of Active Memory Expansion is available to provide more exact memory expansion and CPU measurements. The trial can be requested using the Capacity on Demand Web page

http://www.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/cod/

Active Memory Expansion is enabled by a chargeable hardware feature (#4792), which can be ordered with the initial order of the server or as an MES order. A

IBM United States Hardware Announcement 110-009

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