Pools page in the AIX PowerVM view

The Pools page in the AIX PowerVM view provides an overview of configured pools in all hosts (or in the selected host) that includes information such as CPU and memory utilization, CPU entitlement utilization, processor count, and more. All metrics in this view are common to both HMC Only and LPAR instrumented modes.

Scenario

Teresa is an AIX Technology Specialist in an IT organization. She manages and monitors the AIX infrastructure to ensure that there are sufficient resources (CPU, memory, and storage) to meet the current and future capacity requirements.

Teressa wants to know the residual CPU capacity of the pools and details of how the CPU capacity is utilized by the partitions. She would like to get the following information:

  • Check the health of the pools in the AIX infrastructure to make sure that the resources are efficiently utilized.
  • Know whether any partitions are exceeding their entitled utilization or are under-utilizing the CPU capacity.

Alan, an administrator, installs the AIX views and provides the required permissions to Teresa to access the view. With AIX views, Teresa can get an overview of all the available pools in the AIX virtualization environment. To know the residual CPU capacity of the pools, she can review the Pools page in the AIX PowerVM view. This page provides CPU metrics such as total configured, entitlement capacity, and entitlement capacity utilization.

By using the Pool details page, Teressa can check the health of the pools by analyzing how the CPU is utilized over a period of time by partitions and whether she needs to increase or decrease the entitled capacity for any partition.

To access the page, select Views > Virtualization > AIX > PowerVM, and click the Pools tab.

Related topics

Virtualization-views

Out-of-the-box-capacity-views

Filtering-data-displayed-in-Views

PowerVM pools

The Pools table lists all pools in all hosts (unless filtered on selected hosts using the Hosts filter) contained in the selected domain.

Each row corresponds to a PowerVM pool and shows the following information.

Important

  • Metrics marked with ➕️ are displayed only if Active Memory Sharing (AMS) is enabled.
  • By default, some columns are hidden. You can show or hide columns using the action menuaction_menu.pngthat is located next to the Pools table title. For more information, see Managing-charts-and-tables-in-Views.

Column

Description

Statistical
Type 

Metrics 

Pool

Name of the pool.

Last value

NAME

Host

Name of the host that contains the pool.

Last value

Host name retrieved using relationship VH_CONTAINS_RP 

Processors

Number of CPU cores configured for the pool.

Last value

CPU_NUM 

CPU Allocated [%]

Percentages of CPU utilization of the pool normalized by the cores allocated to the pool.

95th percentile

CPU_ALLOC_UTIL

CPU Util [%]

CPU capacity used by the pool normalized by the cores allocated to the pool.

95th Percentile

CPU_UTIL 

Entitlement Capacity

Sum of entitled capacity of the partitions in the pool expressed in terms of CPU cores.

Last value

CPU_ENTC

Entitlement Consumption

Sum of CPU used by the partitions in the pool expressed in terms of CPU cores.

95th Percentile

CPU_ENTC_CONS

Entitlement Util

Sum of CPU used by the partitions in the pool normalized by the sum of entitlement of the partitions in the pool.

Computed metric - based on 95th Percentile

Computed using CPU_ENTC_CONS and CPU_ENTC

➕️ Memory [GB]

Total physical memory available for the pool.

Last value

TOTAL_REAL_MEM

➕️ Memory Util [%]

Percentage of memory used by the pool, normalized by the total memory of the host.

95th Percentile

MEM_UTIL 

➕️ Memory Over-commitment [%]

The percentage of memory configured for the partitions in the pool over the total memory available in the pool.

Computed metric – Based on Last value of Total Memory [GB] of the partitions and of the pool

Computed using TOTAL_REAL_MEM of pool and TOTAL_REAL_MEM of partitions that are part of the Active Memory Sharing (AMS) pool

Pool details

To view the details page for a particular pool, click the name of the pool in the Pools table. The Pool details page displays the following information:

  • General details: General pool details, such as name, type, description, number of elements within it, and tags are displayed at the top of the page. 
  • Related Information panel: Displays links to detailed pages for Thresholds and Partition details.
  • Tags panel: Displays tags, if any, that are associated with the pool.  For more information, see Working with tag filters. 

  • Summary information: The Summary tab, that is displayed by default, displays performance details for the selected pool in a horizontal summary table, as well as charts.

    You can download charts, annotate them, print them, and so on. For more information, see Managing charts.  

  • Configuration Details: The Configuration Details tab displays the configuration metrics for the pool.
  • Shared Processor Pools: The Shared Processor Pools tab displays details of any contained shared processor pools, which will be filled only in the case of Multiple Shared-Processor Pools (MSPP).
  • Contained Elements: The Contained Elements section contains a table that displays partition details for each partition present in the selected pool. See Partitions-page-in-the-AIX-PowerVM-view for more information.

Partitions in the Shared Memory Pools

The Shared Processor Pools table shows any contained shared processor pools, which will be filled only in the case of Multiple Shared-Processor Pools (MSPP):

Column

Description

Statistical
Type 

Metrics 

Partition

Name of the partition in the shared memory pool table

Last value

NAME

Total Memory [GB]

Total memory configured for the partition.

Last value

TOTAL_REAL_MEM 

Memory Utilization [%]

Memory Utilization of the partition, measured in percentage.

95th Percentile

MEM_UTIL

Real Memory Utilization [%]

Real Memory utilization of the partition, this includes the memory used by processes and excludes the memory assigned to file system cache.

95th percentile

MEM_REAL_UTIL

AMS Mode

Active Memory Sharing mode status. 1 denotes ON, and 0, OFF.

Last value

LP_AMS_MODE

 

Granted Memory [GB]

Amount of memory assigned to the partition from the shared memory pool. Hypervisor grants memory to the partition based on the needs of the partition and the contention from other partitions within the shared memory pool.

Average

MEM_GRANTED

 

Hypervisor Page Ins [Pages/sec]

Shows the number of hypervisor page-ins for the partition. A hypervisor page-in occurs if a page being referenced is not available in real memory because it has been paged out by the hypervisor previously. A high value for this metric is an indication of excessive memory-overcommitment.

Average

MEM_HYPERVISOR_PAGE_INS

 

Contained Shared pools

The Contained Shared Pools table displays the following columns for all PowerVM pools when the AMS or AME mode is enabled:

Column

Description

Statistical
Type 

Metrics 

Shared Pool

Name of the shared pool.

Last value

NAME 

Processors

The number of processors in the shared pool.

Last value

CPU_NUM 

CPU Entitlement

The number of CPU cores allocated to the shared pool.

Last value

CPU_ENTC 

CPU Utilization [%]

Percentage of CPU used by the shared pool, normalized by the number of dedicated processors for DLPAR, and by the number of virtual processors for SPLPAR.

95th Percentile

CPU_UTIL

CPU Entitlement Used [%]

Percentage of CPU used by the shared pool, normalized by the CPU entitlement. This metric is relevant for SPLPARs only.

95th Percentile

CPU_ENT_UTIL