Edit: I always like to look for these documents. Some links no longer work.
Originally posted March 7, 2017 on AIXchange
As I noted in this 2013 post, Fredrik Lundholm compiles and updates a presentation called the Power Implementation Quality Standard for commercial workloads.
This presentation has proven to be rather popular, so I want to let you know that Fredrik’s latest set of slides, version 1.17, can be downloaded here.
The presentation lists changes to previous versions:
“There is some information about the E850C, along with VIOS 2.2.5.
The last time I wrote about these slides we were on version 1.9, so there have been quite a few changes since then. He has a change log on page 3, but here are some of the highlights of what has been updated over time.
Changes for 1.17:
2017 Update, VIOS 2.2.5
Changes for 1.15:
VIOS update, PowerHA update, AIX update, GPFS update, poll uplink, vNIC, SR_IOV, Linux, IBM i
Changes for 1.14:
Clarification aio_maxreqs
VIOS clarification, interim FIXES
Changes for 1.13:
Correction on attribute for large receive
Currency update, POWER8,
I/O Enlarged Capacity
Changes for 1.12:
PowerHA, and PowerHA levels, AIX levels, VIO levels.
Virtual Ethernet buffer update
Changes for 1.11:
Power Saving Animation
Network configuration update admin VLAN / simplification
Removal of obsolete Network design
Changes for 1.10:
Favor Performance without Active Energy Manager
AIX/GPFS code level updates
AIX Memory Pin”
Here are some highlights, from my perspective. First, from page 10:
“With firmware levels 740, 760 or 770 and above on POWER7 systems and all POWER8/POWER7+ models, the ASMI interface includes the favor performance setting.
With POWER8 and HMC8 this interface can be directly accessed from the HMC configuration panels, ASMI is not required. A new option fixed max frequency is also available (1.17).
Engage favour performance as a mandatory modification for most environments in the ”Power Management Mode” menu.
This safely boosts system clock speed by 4-9%.”
This is from page 11:
“On E870/E880 machines the recommendation is to disable “I/O Adapter Enlarged Capacity” to free up hypervisor memory. With PowerVM 2.2.5 and FW860 this is now better. Only disable for AIX/IBM i only systems.
Power off the machine, log on to ASMI menu on HMC –> I/O Adapter Enlarged Capacity:
Disable I/O Adapter Enlarged Capacity by unselecting the tick box
Power on the server
Observe Hypervisor memory consumption”
In addition, there’s a current AIX matrix on page 25, along with plenty of other great information.
If you haven’t looked at Fredrik’s work previously, it’s well worth your time.