Advanced POWER Virtualization on IBM System p5 - Previous ...

MCM. The goal of processor affinity is to try to keep a thread close to its data and
to optimize the use of the caches.
System monitoring and statistics
The sharing of systems resources, such as with micro-partitions and SMT
challenges the traditional AIX 5L performance collection and reporting tools. The
<strong>POWER</strong>5 architecture introduced a new register (in each core): the Processor
Utilization Resource Register (PURR). This register provides the partition with an
accurate cycle count to measure activity during time slices dispatched on a
physical processor.
The PURR and the performance collection and reporting tools are discussed in
5.5, “Monitoring a virtualized environment” on page 321.
Monitoring Hypervisor hcalls
AIX 5L Version 5.3, provides the lparstat and mpstat commands to display the
Hypervisor and virtual processor affinity statistics. These commands are
discussed in detail in 5.5, “Monitoring a virtualized environment” on page 321.
2.6.2 <strong>POWER</strong> Hypervisor and virtual I/O
The <strong>POWER</strong> Hypervisor does not own any physical I/O devices nor does it
provide virtual interfaces to them. All physical I/O devices in the system are
owned by logical partitions.
Note: Shared I/O devices are owned by the Virtual I/O Server, which provides
access to the real hardware upon which the virtual device is based.
To support virtual I/O, the <strong>POWER</strong> Hypervisor provides:
► Control and configuration structures for virtual adapters
► Controlled and secure access to physical I/O adapters between partitions
► Interrupt virtualization and management
I/O types supported
Three types of virtual I/O adapters are supported by the <strong>POWER</strong> Hypervisor:
►
►
►
SCSI
Ethernet
System Port (virtual console)
Chapter 2. <strong>Virtualization</strong> technologies on System p servers 53