Edit: I still like this analogy.
Originally posted January 3, 2012 on AIXchange
I was recently delayed at the San Jose airport. Such is the life of a consultant.
The problem this particular day was dense fog. Airplanes could take off, but, per FAA rules, they weren’t allowed to land. My flight was coming from Reno, stopping in San Jose and continuing to Las Vegas. But with the fog, the plane was rerouted straight to Las Vegas. That left me and a bunch of other passengers to fend for ourselves.
Luckily I was able to book tickets for a flight later that day. (Given my many miles logged with this particular airline, they were pretty accommodating.) I made some different connections through different cities and arrived home some six hours later than planned. Unsurprisingly, my checked luggage didn’t accompany me. It showed up the next day (which is why I generally only take along what I can carry on). But at least I was able to complete my travels in one day.
As a frequent flyer, I’ve been through worse. Several times I couldn’t get directly home. I had to fly into a nearby airport and take the train the rest of the way. Once I ended up in a rental car with three strangers as we drove from Pittsburgh to Chicago (again, fog was the issue). I’ve also shared a rental car with fellow weary travelers between Fresno and San Francisco.
Being stranded at the airport does give a person time to think. For instance, while I sat in San Jose, I thought how great it would be if, whenever a flight is delayed or diverted, a spare plane with a standby crew standing would be instantly available to take passengers to their destination.
Imagine a snowstorm or other weather event that causes disruptions throughout an entire region over several days. In my fantasy world there would be lightly loaded planes with available seats so everyone could rebook with little worry or hassle. In an even more perfect world, this extra capacity would be available at every airport, at any time. If one plane has a mechanical problem, another would be ready to go. And in peak travel times — say, Thanksgiving week — extra planes could be deployed as needed to satisfy the additional demand.
So basically, I was thinking how awesome it’d be if flying was like Power Systems hardware.
Just think about that. Think about capabilities like Capacity on Demand (COD), micropartitioning and shared processor pools. Think about how the hypervisor, on a millisecond by millisecond basis, can redistribute workloads and efficiently utilize the processors on your machine.
Instead of sizing standalone machines for peak workloads, you can put many LPARs on a single frame to more fully utilize that machine. If you need extra capacity, it’s available. If you’re using COD, you can fire up dormant processors or extra memory that’s already on the frame. Active memory expansion and active memory sharing allow you to do more with less physical memory. You have many options to get extra capacity built right into your systems.
Unfortunately, excess capacity was nowhere to be found on my most recent layover at the San Jose airport. But at least whenever I return from the road, I know I’ll have excess capacity to handle additional workload in my computing environment.