Utilization, Simultaneous Multi-threading & Virtual Processors

2. Utilization, Simultaneous Multi-threading & Virtual Processors

3. Review: POWER6 vs POWER7 SMT Utilization POWER5/6 utilization does not account for SMT, POWER7 is calibrated in hardware POWER6 SMT2 POWER7 SMT2 POWER7 SMT4 100% busy ~70% busy ~65% busy • Simulating a single threaded process on 1 core, 1 Virtual Processor, utilization values change. In each of these cases, physical consumption can be reported as 1.0. • Real world production workloads will involve dozens to thousands of threads, so many users may not notice any difference in the “macro” scale • See Simultaneous Multi-Threading on POWER7 Processors by Mark Funk http://www.ibm.com/systems/resources/pwrsysperf_SMT4OnP7.pdf Processor Utilization in AIX by Saravanan Devendran https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/wikis/home?lang=en#/wiki/Power%20Systems/page/Understanding%20CPU%20utilization%20on%20AIX Htc0 Htc0 busy busy Htc0 busy Htc1 Htc1 idle idle Htc1 idle idle Htc2 idle Htc3 100% busy 100% busy Htc0 busy Htc0 busy “busy” = user% + system% Htc1 busy Htc1 busy

4. Virtual Processor Activate Review: POWER6 vs POWER7 Dispatch POWER7 SMT4 POWER6 SMT2 Htc0 busy When or Htc0 busy Htc1 idle • There is a difference between how workloads are distributed across cores in POWER7 and earlier architectures • In POWER5 & POWER6, the primary and secondary SMT threads are loaded to ~80% utilization before another Virtual Processor is unfolded • In POWER7, all of the primary threads (defined by how many VPs are available) are loaded to at least ~50% utilization before the secondary threads are used. Once the secondary threads are loaded, only then will the tertiary threads be dispatched. This is referred to as Raw Throughput mode. • Why? Raw Throughput provides the highest per-thread throughput and best response times at the expense of activating more physical cores Htc1 busy idle Htc2 idle Htc3 ~80% busy ~50% busy

5. Review: POWER6 vs POWER7 Dispatch proc0 proc1 proc2 proc3 POWER6 Primary Secondary proc0 proc1 proc2 proc3 Primary POWER7 Secondary Tertiaries Once a Virtual Processor is dispatched, the Physical Consumption metric will typically increase to the next whole number Put another way,the more Virtual Processors you assign, the higher your Physical Consumption is likely to be in POWER7

6. POWER7 Consumption: A Problem? • POWER7 will activate more cores at lower utilization levels than earlier architectures when excess VP’s are present • Customers may complain that the physical consumption metric (reported as physc or pc) is equal to or possibly even higher after migrations to POWER7 from earlier architecture • Every POWER7 customer with this complaint to also have significantly higher idle% percentages over earlier architectures • Consolidation of workloads and may result in many more VP’s assigned to the POWER7 partition • Customers may also note that CPU capacity planning is more difficult in POWER7. If they will not reduce VPs, they may need subtract %idle from the physical consumption metrics for more accurate planning. • POWER5 & POWER6, 80% utilization was closer to 1.0 physical core • In POWER7 with excess VPs, in theory, all of the VPs could be dispatched and the system could be 40-50% idle • Thus, you cannot get to higher utilization of larger systems if you have lots of VPs which are only exercising the primary SMT thread – you will have high Physical Consumption with lots of idle capacity

7. POWER7 Consumption: Solutions • Apply APARs in backup section, these can be causal for many of the high consumption complaints • Beware allocating many more Virtual Processors than sized • Reduce Virtual Processor counts to activate secondary and tertiary SMT threads • Utilization percentages will go up, physical consumption will remain equal or drop • Use nmon, topas, sar or mpstat to look at logical CPUs. If only primary SMT threads are in use with a multi-threaded workload, then excess VP’s are present. • A new alternative is Scaled Throughput, allowing increases in per-core utilization by a Virtual Processor

8. Scaled Throughput

9. What is Scaled Throughput? • Scaled Throughput is an alternative to the default “Raw” AIX scheduling mechanism • It is an alternative for some customers at the cost of partition performance • It is not an alternative to addressing AIX and pHyp defects, partition placement issues, realistic entitlement settings and excessive Virtual Processor assignments • It will dispatch more SMT threads to a VP/core before unfolding additional VPs • It can be considered to be more like the POWER6 folding mechanism, but this is a generalization, not a technical statement • Supported on POWER7/POWER7+, AIX 6.1 TL08 & AIX 7.1 TL02 • Raw vs Scaled Performance • Raw provides the highest per-thread throughput and best response times at the expense of activating more physical cores • Scaled provides the highest core throughput at the expense of per-thread response times and throughput. It also provides the highest system-wide throughput per VP because tertiary thread capacity is “not left on the table.”

10. POWER7 Raw vs Scaled Throughput proc0 proc1 proc2 proc3 Primary Raw default Secondary Tertiaries lcpu 0-3 lcpu 4-7 lcpu 8-11 lcpu 12-15 100% 88% 63% 77% 100% 77% 88% 63% 100% 88% 77% 63% 100% 63% 77% 88% proc0 proc1 proc2 proc3 Scaled Mode 2 Once a Virtual Processor is dispatched, physical consumption will typically increase to the next whole number proc0 proc1 proc2 proc3 Scaled Mode 4

11. Scaled Throughput: Tuning • Tunings are not restricted, but you can be sure that anyone experimenting with this without understanding the mechanism may suffer significant performance impacts • Dynamic schedo tunable • Actual thresholds used by these modes are not documented and may change at any time • schedo –p –o vpm_throughput_mode= 0 Legacy Raw mode (default) 1Scaled or “Enhanced Raw” mode with a higher threshold than legacy 2 Scaled mode, use primary and secondary SMT threads 4 Scaled mode, use all four SMT threads • Tunable schedo vpm_throughput_core_threshold sets a core count at which to switch from Raw to Scaled Mode • Allows fine-tuning for workloads depending on utilization level • VP’s will “ramp up” quicker to a desired number of cores, and then be more conservative under chosen Scaled mode

12. Scaled Throughput: Workloads • Workloads • Workloads with many light-weight threads with short dispatch cycles and low IO (the same types of workloads that benefit well from SMT) • Customers who are easily meeting network and I/O SLA’s may find the tradeoff between higher latencies and lower core consumption attractive • Customers who will not reduce over-allocated VPs and prefer to see behavior similar to POWER6 • Performance • It depends, we can’t guarantee what a particular workload will do • Mode 1 may see little or no impact but higher per-core utilization with lower physical consumed • Workloads that do not benefit from SMT and use Mode 2 or Mode 4 will see double-digit per-thread performance degradation (higher latency, slower completion times)

13. Raw Throughput: Default and Mode 1 • AIX will typically allocate 2 extra Virtual Processors as the workload scales up and is more instantaneous in nature • VP’s are activated and deactivated one second at a time • Mode 1 is more of a modification to the Raw (Mode 0) throughput mode, using a higher utilization threshold and moving average to prevent less VP oscillation • It is less aggressive about VP activations. Many workloads may see little or no performance impact

14. Scaled Throughput: Modes 2 & 4 • Mode 2 utilizes both the primary and secondary SMT threads • Somewhat like POWER6 SMT2, eight threads are collapsed onto four cores • “Physical Busy” or utilization percentage reaches ~80% of Physical Consumption • Mode 4 utilizes both the primary, secondary and tertiary SMT threads • Eight threads are collapsed onto two cores • “Physical Busy” or utilization percentage reaches 90-100% of Physical Consumption

15. Tuning (other) • Never adjust the legacy vpm_fold_threshold without L3 Support guidance • Remember that Virtual Processors activate and deactivate on 1 second boundaries. The legacy schedo tunable vpm_xvcpus allows enablement of more VPs than required by the workload. This is rarely needed, and is over-ridden when Scaled Mode is active. • If you use RSET or bindprocessor function and bind a workload • To a secondary thread, that VP will always stay in at least SMT2 mode • If you bind to a tertiary thread, that VP cannot leave SMT4 mode • These functions should only be used to bind to primary threads unless you know what you are doing or are an application developer familiar with the RSET API • Use bindprocessor –s to list primary, secondary and tertiary threads • A recurring question is “How do I know how many Virtual Processors are active?” • There is no tool or metric that shows active Virtual Processor count • There are ways to guess this, and looking a physical consumption (if folding is activated), physc count should roughly equal active VPs • nmon Analyser makes a somewhat accurate representation, but over long intervals (with a default of 5 minutes), it does not provide much resolution • For an idea at a given instant with a consistent workload, you can use: echo vpm | kdb

16. Virtual Processors > echo vpm | kdb VSD Thread State CPU CPPR VP_STATE FLAGS SLEEP_STATE PROD_TIME: SECS NSECS CEDE_LAT 0 0 ACTIVE 1 AWAKE 0000000000000000 00000000 00 1 255 ACTIVE 0 AWAKE 000000005058C6DE 25AA4BBD 00 2 255 ACTIVE 0 AWAKE 000000005058C6DE 25AA636E 00 3 255 ACTIVE 0 AWAKE 000000005058C6DE 25AA4BFE 00 4 255 ACTIVE 0 AWAKE 00000000506900DD 0D0CC64B 00 5 255 ACTIVE 0 AWAKE 00000000506900DD 0D0D6EE0 00 6 255 ACTIVE 0 AWAKE 00000000506900DD 0D0E4F1E 00 7 255 ACTIVE 0 AWAKE 00000000506900DD 0D0F7BE6 00 8 11 DISABLED 1 SLEEPING 0000000050691728 358C3218 02 9 11 DISABLED 1 SLEEPING 0000000050691728 358C325A 02 10 11 DISABLED 1 SLEEPING 0000000050691728 358C319F 02 11 11 DISABLED 1 SLEEPING 0000000050691728 358E2AFE 02 12 11 DISABLED 1 SLEEPING 0000000050691728 358C327A 02 13 11 DISABLED 1 SLEEPING 0000000050691728 358C3954 02 14 11 DISABLED 1 SLEEPING 0000000050691728 358C3B13 02 15 11 DISABLED 1 SLEEPING 0000000050691728 358C3ABD 02 VP VP With SMT4, each core will have 4 Logical CPUs, which equals 1 Virtual Processor This method is only useful for steady-state workloads

17. Variable Capacity Weighting

18. Variable Capacity Weighting - Reality • Do I use a partition’s Variable Capacity Weight to get uncapped capacity? • NO: PowerVM has no mechanism to distribute uncapped capacity when the pool is not constrained • YES: It’s mechanism to arbitrate shared-pool contention http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/powersys/v3r1m5/index.jsp?topic=/iphat/iphatsharedproc.htm • Uncapped weight is only used where there are more virtual processors ready to consume unused resources than there are physical processors in the shared processor pool. If no contention exists for processor resources, the virtual processors are immediately distributed across the logical partitions independent of their uncapped weights. This can result in situations where the uncapped weights of the logical partitions do not exactly reflect the amount of unused capacity. • This behavior is only supported for the default (global) shared pool • Unused capacity is spread by the hypervisor across all active pools, and not managed on a per-pool basis • Cycles will be distributed evenly in virtual shared (sub) pools, and not based on Variable Capacity Weight ratios

19. Constraining Workloads • Variable Capacity Weighting is not a partition or job management utility • Environments that are out of pool resources cannot be actively controlled with high-fidelity by fighting over scraps of unused cycles • It is only a failsafe when an environment is running out of capacity, typically to provide a last option for the VIOS • If you are out of CPU resources, you need to use other methods to manage workloads

20. Constraining Workloads • How do I protect critical workloads? By constraining other partitions access to CPU resources • PowerVM methods • Capping Entitlement or setting Variable Capacity Weight to 0 • Dynamically reducing Virtual Processors. Entitlement can also be reduced dynamically, and can reduce guaranteed resources, but adjusting VPs has a more direct impact. • You must establish a practical range of minimum and maximum entitlement ranges to allow flexibility in dynamic changes • Virtual Shared Pools (or sub-pools) - can constrain a workload by setting Maximum Processing Units of a sub-pool dynamically, but this is effectively the same as reducing VPs • Use Capacity-on-Demand feature(s) to grow pool • Operating System methods • Process priorities • Execute flexible workloads at different times • Workload Manager Classes or Workload Partitions • Rebalance workloads between systems

21. Constraining Workloads If you’re out of capacity, you need to dial back VPs, cap partitions, move workloads (in time or placement) or use Capacity-on-Demand

22. Redbook & APAR Updates

23. Power Systems Performance Guide New! This is an outstanding Redbook for new and experienced users http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg248080.html

24. POWER7 Optimization & Tuning Guide New! Updated! A single “first stop” definitive source for a wide variety of general information and guidance, referencing other more detailed sources on particular topics Exploitable by IBM, ISV and customer software developers Hypervisor, OS (AIX & Linux), Java, compilers and memory details Guidance/Links for DB2, WAS, Oracle, Sybase, SaS, SAP Business Objects http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg248079.html

25. Performance APARs • The most problematic performance issues with AIX were resolve in early 2012. Surprisingly, many customers are still running with these defects • Memory Affinity Domain Balancing • Scheduler/Dispatch defects • Wait process defect • TCP Retransmit • Shared Ethernet defects • Do not run with a firmware level below 720_101. A hypervisor dispatch defect exists below that level. • The next slide provides the APARs to resolve the major issues • We strongly recommend updating to these levels if you encounter performance issues. AIX Support will likely push you to these levels before wanting to do detailed research on performance PMRs. • All customer Proof-of-Concept or tests should use these as minimum recommended levels to start with

26. Performance APARs – MUST HAVE

27. Early 2013 Paging Defect • New global_numperm tunable has been enabled with AIX 6.1 TL7 SP4 / 7.1 TL1 SP4. Customers may experience early paging due to failed pincheck on 64K pages • What • Fails to steal from 4K pages when 64K pages near maximum pin percentage (maxpin) and 4K pages are available • Scenario not properly checked for all memory pools when global numperm is enabled • vmstat –v shows that the number of 64K pages pinned is close to maxpin% • svmon shows that 64K pinned pages are approaching the maxpin value • Action • Apply APAR • Alternatively if the APAR cannot be applied immediately, disable numperm_global : # vmo -p -o numperm_global=0 • Tunable is dynamic, but workloads paged out will have to be paged in and performance may suffer until that completes or a reboot is performed • APARs IV26272 AIX 6.1 TL7 IV26735 AIX 6.1 TL8 IV26581 AIX 7.1 TL0 IV27014 AIX 7.1 TL1 IV26731 AIX 7.1 TL2