Micro-Partitioning is a form of logical partitioning which was introduced by IBM on systems using the POWER5 processor, and is also referred to as a shared processor partition, and only differs from a dedicated processor partition in the way CPU utilization is configured and managed by the POWER Hypervisor (PHYP) firmware. All IBM POWER5 and POWER6 systems are partitioned and will run "on top" of the PHYP.
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. The company began in 1911, founded in Endicott, New York, as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) and was renamed "International Business Machines" in 1924.
The POWER5 is a microprocessor developed and fabricated by IBM. It is an improved version of the POWER4. The principal improvements are support for simultaneous multithreading (SMT) and an on-die memory controller. The POWER5 is a dual-core microprocessor, with each core supporting one physical thread and two logical threads, for a total of two physical threads and four logical threads.
The POWER6 is a microprocessor developed by IBM that implemented the Power ISA v.2.03. When it became available in systems in 2007, it succeeded the POWER5+ as IBM's flagship Power microprocessor. It is claimed to be part of the eCLipz project, said to have a goal of converging IBM's server hardware where practical.
The POWER Hypervisor controls time slicing, management of all hardware interrupts, dynamic movement of resources across multiple operating systems, and dispatching of logical partition workloads.
When a shared processor partition is activated by the PHYP, the LPAR is guaranteed a certain processing capacity, if needed, and a number of virtual processors, based on configuration and current availability. The processing capacity is drawn from a pool of shared processor resources.
The minimum processing capacity per processor is 1/10 of a physical processor core, with a further granularity of 1/100, and the PHYP uses a 10 ms time slicing dispatch window for scheduling all shared processor partitions' virtual processor queues to the PHYP physical processor core queues. A shared processor partition can be either capped or uncapped. A capped partition can never exceed the currently configured processing capacity, whereas an uncapped partition can exceed the currently configured processing capacity up to 100% of the number of the currently configured virtual processors.
If the shared processor partition is DLPAR capable, the number of virtual processors and processing capacity can be altered dynamically for the partition.
Dynamic Logical Partitioning (DLPAR), is the capability of a logical partition (LPAR) to be reconfigured dynamically, without having to shut down the operating system that runs in the LPAR. DLPAR enables memory, CPU capacity, and I/O interfaces to be moved nondisruptively between LPARs within the same server.
AIX is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms. Originally released for the IBM RT PC RISC workstation, AIX now supports or has supported a wide variety of hardware platforms, including the IBM RS/6000 series and later POWER and PowerPC-based systems, IBM System i, System/370 mainframes, PS/2 personal computers, and the Apple Network Server.
VM is a family of IBM virtual machine operating systems used on IBM mainframes System/370, System/390, zSeries, System z and compatible systems, including the Hercules emulator for personal computers.
A hypervisor or virtual machine monitor (VMM) is computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called a host machine, and each virtual machine is called a guest machine. The hypervisor presents the guest operating systems with a virtual operating platform and manages the execution of the guest operating systems. Multiple instances of a variety of operating systems may share the virtualized hardware resources: for example, Linux, Windows, and macOS instances can all run on a single physical x86 machine. This contrasts with operating-system-level virtualization, where all instances must share a single kernel, though the guest operating systems can differ in user space, such as different Linux distributions with the same kernel.
In computing, para-virtualization is a virtualization technique that presents a software interface to the virtual machines which is similar, yet not identical to the underlying hardware–software interface.
In computing, a Parallel Sysplex is a cluster of IBM mainframes acting together as a single system image with z/OS. Used for disaster recovery, Parallel Sysplex combines data sharing and parallel computing to allow a cluster of up to 32 systems to share a workload for high performance and high availability.
A logical partition, commonly called an LPAR, is a subset of a computer's hardware resources, virtualized as a separate computer. In effect, a physical machine can be partitioned into multiple logical partitions, each hosting a separate instance of an operating system.
IBM Z is a family name used by IBM for all of its non-POWER mainframe computers from the Z900 on.
In July 2017, with another generation of products, the official family was changed to IBM Z from IBM z Systems; the IBM Z family now includes the newest model the IBM z14, as well as the z13, the IBM zEnterprise models, the IBM System z10 models, the IBM System z9 models and IBM eServer zSeries models.
Hardware virtualization is the virtualization of computers as complete hardware platforms, certain logical abstractions of their componentry, or only the functionality required to run various operating systems. Virtualization hides the physical characteristics of a computing platform from the users, presenting instead an abstract computing platform. At its origins, the software that controlled virtualization was called a "control program", but the terms "hypervisor" or "virtual machine monitor" became preferred over time.
Logical Domains is the server virtualization and partitioning technology for SPARC V9 processors. It was first released by Sun Microsystems in April 2007. After the Oracle acquisition of Sun in January 2010, the product has been re-branded as Oracle VM Server for SPARC from version 2.0 onwards.
PowerVM, formerly known as Advanced Power Virtualization (APV), is a chargeable feature of IBM POWER5, POWER6, POWER7, POWER8, and POWER9 servers and is required for support of micro-partitions and other advanced features. Support is provided for IBM i, AIX and Linux.
On IBM mainframes running the z/OS operating system, Intelligent Resource Director (IRD) is software that automates the management of CPU resources and certain I/O resources.
AIX Workload partitions (WPARs) are a software implementation of operating system-level virtualization technology introduced in the IBM's AIX 6.1 operating system that provides application environment isolation and resource control.
IBM System z10 is a line of IBM mainframes. The z10 Enterprise Class (EC) was announced on February 26, 2008. On October 21, 2008, IBM announced the z10 Business Class (BC), a scaled-down version of the z10 EC. The System z10 represents the first model family powered by the z10 quad core processing engine. Its successors are the zEnterprise System models introduced in 2010 and 2012.
Live Partition Mobility is a chargeable Live migration feature of IBM POWER6, POWER7 and POWER8 servers, available since 2007, that allows a running LPAR to be relocated from one system to another. In concept, it is similar to VMware VMotion.
HiperDispatch is a workload dispatching feature found in the newest IBM mainframe models running recent releases of z/OS. HiperDispatch was introduced in February 2008. Support was added to z/VM in its V6R3 release in July 26, 2013.
In mainframe computing PR/SM is a type-1 Hypervisor that allows multiple logical partitions to share physical resources such as CPUs, I/O channels and LAN interfaces; when sharing channels, the LPARs can share I/O devices such asdirect access storage devices (DASD). PR/SM is integrated with all IBM System z machines. Similar facilities exist on the i and p versions of IBM Power Systems.
Linux on IBM Z is the collective term for the Linux operating system compiled to run on IBM mainframes, especially IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE servers. Similar terms which imply the same meaning are Linux on zEnterprise, Linux on zSeries, Linux/390, Linux/390x, etc. The terms zLinux or z/Linux are also sometimes used, but these terms are discouraged by IBM as they create the implication of an IBM-offered or IBM-distributed version of Linux, which is incorrect.
In computing, a system virtual machine is a virtual machine provides a complete system platform which supports the execution of a complete operating system (OS). These usually emulate an existing architecture, and are built with the purpose of either providing a platform to run programs where the real hardware is not available for use, or of having multiple instances of virtual machines leading to more efficient use of computing resources, both in terms of energy consumption and cost effectiveness, or both. A VM was originally defined by Popek and Goldberg as "an efficient, isolated duplicate of a real machine".
The IBM Enterprise System/390 was the third generation of the System/360 instruction set architecture. The first ESA/390 computer was the Enterprise System/9000 (ES/9000) family, which were introduced in 1990. These were followed by the CMOS System/390 mainframe family in the mid-1990s. These systems followed the IBM 3090, with over a decade of follow-ons. The ESA/390 was succeeded by the 64-bit z/Architecture in 2000.