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This white paper describes how Micro-Partitioning™ can be employed on the IBM eServer® p5 570 with AIX 5L™ V5.3 to set up flexible partitioned configurations for dynamic workload balancing of available CPU resources. This paper covers several workload scenarios that demonstrate the performance robustness of Micro-Partitioning in a mixed transactional and batch environment. To show the effects of varying workload transaction rates on different partitions, special time-varying workload drivers were used to simulate changing workload rates. The test system simulates a real client environment where a mixture of interactive and batch workloads that vary in intensity can be expected. This paper describes how special features of the IBM eServer p5 570 with AIX 5L V5.3 allows clients to do dynamic workload balancing between independent partitions and shows inter-partition performance effects. Understanding how shared resource Micro-Partitioning entitlements, weighting, and uncapped mode can affect performance will help system administrators and system planners configure partitions that closely match their server workload requirements. These flexible performance characteristics make the p5-570 with AIX 5L V5.3 a powerful and versatile server consolidation option.
Increasing emphasis on the cost of delivering I/T services has caused an unprecedented interest in server consolidation. Server consolidation is the simplification and optimization of I/T environments by a reduction of the number of discrete components of infrastructure. Consolidation can be done on application environments, such as application servers and databases, and on physical hardware, such as servers, routers, and storage. While numerous benefits can be cited for server consolidation, this white paper will focus on the practical performance aspects of consolidating mixed workload types onto asymmetrically configured (fractional and whole CPU) server partitions.
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