Fall COMMON and Past Blog Entries

This week, I've been busy with Fall COMMON and haven't had time to write a new blog article. In the absence of a new blog this week, I wanted to recommend that if you haven't read some of the past blogs, you should. Some of the early ones published in the fall of 2009 are still very pertinent and of interest.

One example is the ability to Display CPU Utilization for All Partitions, which is republished here this week:

i Can .... Display CPU Utilization for all Partitions 

In last week's blog, I mentioned that with the latest Performance Data Investigator enhancements, IBM i now provides physical system charts that display the overall CPU utilization for the physical box and all partitions, regardless of operating system.

This is an exciting enhancement that many of our customers have asked for, so I want to tell you more about it and how you enable this feature.

Many IBM i customers are using logical partitioning with their systems. When using multiple partitions, many customers want to understand the overall utilization of their processing capability, across all partitions, regardless of whether the partition is running IBM i, AIX or Linux. To do this, many have created their own customized solutions by querying Collection Services data from each partition and pulling together an overall view of CPU utilization; but if you have AIX or Linux partitions, there’s missing information unless you have the skills to collect and understand the performance data from those partitions as well.

With POWER6 hardware and IBM i 6.1, you’ve been able to collect CPU utilization information for the physical system since firmware level xx340_061 was introduced late last year. However, that just enabled the collection of the data; IBM provided no way to view it. With the updates to the Performance Data Investigator I reviewed last week, additional charts are now available for Physical System views of CPU utilization that now let you easily view this data.

However, there are some specific configuration requirements. As I’ve already said, you must be running on POWER6 hardware with a minimum firmware level of xx340_061. You also must be using the IBM i 6.1 release. Then, you must also enable the collection of this performance data for the desired partition. You only need to collect this data on one partition and it must be an IBM i partition. The CPU utilization information collected will reflect work done in partitions running AIX and Linux as well as IBM i, but AIX and Linux don’t support collecting this data. Only IBM i has this data collection capability.

To enable the collection of this performance data requires the setting of a configuration parameter on the HMC or Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM). On the HMC, there’s an "Allow performance information collection" checkbox on the processor configuration tab. Select this checkbox on the IBM i partition that you want to collect this data. It's not quite as simple with IVM; if you’re using IVM, you use the lssyscfg command, specifying the all_perf_collection (permission for the partition to retrieve shared processor pool utilization) parameter. Valid values for the parameter are 0, do not allow authority (the default) and 1, allow authority.

Once the performance data collection support is enabled, Collection Services will collect this additional information. At each collection interval, Collection Services will collect partition configuration and utilization information from the hypervisor; the data is stored in a file named QAPMLPARH. 

The latest update to the Performance Data Investigator includes additional perspectives in the Collection Services content package for this data in a folder called "Physical System." It also includes the following charts: 

• Logical Partitions Overview
• Donated Processor Time by Logical Partition
• Uncapped Processor Time Used by Logical Partition
• Physical Shared Processor Pool Utilization
• Physical Processors Utilization by Physical Processor
• Dedicated Processor Utilization by Logical Partition
• Physical Processors Utilization by Processor Status Overview
• Physical Processor Utilization by Processor Status Detail

Here’s an example of the Logical Partitions Overview chart, which shows configuration data and CPU utilization for all logical partitions on the system:

If you’re on POWER6 hardware, but have not yet installed IBM i 6.1, you may want to think about creating a small i partition and experimenting with this new capability to manage your machine's processor utilization across all partitions.

 

Blog of Blogs, Videos and References

I'm a bit short on time this week since I'm recovering from the busy week at COMMON, so this blog is also short.

I wanted to share with you a few new blogs and videos that are available to you.

IBM has created new videos on IBM i that are out on YouTube:

• IBM i – Designed for Data
• Workload Optimized Systems
  
  

There are also some relatively new bloggers out there that you should know about:

• Mike Cain, a well-known expert on DB2 on i has a blog on …. db2 for i, which offers insight and perspectives on data management using IBM i.
• Erwin Earley has a blog, Power Implementers Blog, for hints and tips various technologies on IBM Power Systems. Many of the blog posts deal with using IBM Systems Director with Power Systems.

There are also some new and updated Redbooks that are available:

• There's a lot of informantion that's been published about the IBM PureSystems. Perhaps a great place to start is the Overview of IBM PureSystems
  
• Two Redbooks that were written last year have recently been updated.
  • Power VM Virtualization Introduction and Configuration
  • A draft version is available of Power VM Virtualization Managing and Monitoring

Finally, the IBM i developerWorks site while not new, is a great resource for the latest IBM i information. Be sure to check out the Community & forums link on that developerWorks site for links to all sorts of additional blogs, forums, wikis and more.

 

New Years Wishes

It's hard to believe that I've been writing these blog articles for well over a year already! My objective has been to write about IBM i's latest enhancements and hidden features in these blog articles and I have a long list of topics yet to cover.

But I thought I'd like to take a step back and solicit input from my readers on what you would like to see. What would make this blog better? Do you like the focus on enhancements that IBM has made to i? The sometimes hard-to-find information on function added with PTFs? Do you have specific topics you'd like to see more information on?

Lately I have written about some topics that aren't new enhancements – such as the library locking level system value, history log changes, and the improved scalability of subsystems to support many devices. Were articles like this helpful to you? Should I continue to write about existing features as well as recent enhancements?

Your input and feedback will be appreciated. Posting your input as comments to this article would be a great way to have a discussion regarding future topics. But also feel free to send your feedback to me at [email protected].

It's interesting that I personally have discovered these articles to be a valuable reference for my own use, and that was rather unexpected! I don't always remember the details and generally look up information when I need it. I have found myself going back to the blogs over and over again. And it's wonderful when I get a question that I can answer simply be providing the link to information I had written.

I'd also like to take this time to thank my colleagues at IBM who have written articles for me. In general, my goal is to personally write more than half of the articles. But I don't have the breadth of knowledge to cover everything and thus rely on others for topics outside my personal areas of expertise.

This will be the last blog update of 2010. I'm looking forward to celebrating 1-1-11 (isn't that a great date!) and a wonderful 2011. Now if it would just stop snowing here!