Dynamic reconfiguration: Basic building blocks for autonomic computing on IBM pSeries servers

A logical partition in an IBM pSeries symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) system is a subset of the hardware of the SMP that can host an operating system (OS) instance. Dynamic reconfiguration (DR) on these logically partitioned servers enables the movement of hardware resources (such as processors, memo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IBM systems journal 2003-01, Vol.42 (1), p.29-37
Main Authors: Jann, J, Browning, L M, Burugula, R S
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Automation
Cost control
Design
Operating systems
Semantics
Servers
Studies
Workloads
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Summary:A logical partition in an IBM pSeries symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) system is a subset of the hardware of the SMP that can host an operating system (OS) instance. Dynamic reconfiguration (DR) on these logically partitioned servers enables the movement of hardware resources (such as processors, memory, and I/O slots) from one logical partition to another without requiring reboots. This capability also enables an autonomic agent to monitor usage of the partitions and automatically move hardware resources to a needy OS instance nondisruptively. Today, as SMPs and nonuniform memory access (NUMA) systems become larger and larger, the ability to run several instances of an operating system(s) on a given hardware system, so that each OS instance plus its subsystems scale or perform well, has the advantage of an optimal aggregate performance, which can translate into cost savings for customers. Though static partitioning provides a solution to this overall performance optimization problem, DR enables an improved solution by providing the capability to dynamically move hardware resources to a needy OS instance in a timely fashion to match workload demands.
ISSN:0018-8670
DOI:10.1147/sj.421.0029