I know this is an "it depends" question, but I hope some of you can give me a very general answer. As an MVS guy, I'm used to being able to run the processor very close to or even at 100% without significant performance degradation. Assuming that everything is configured and tuned properly (a big assumption, I know), can VM drive the processor the same way? Our application people are used to other platforms that don't tolerate high CPU utilization so well and think things are going to start falling apart when we hit 80%. I'd like to reassure them--but only if it's accurate to do so! This is a WebSphere application running on multiple SUSE instances, with the data on DB2 under z/OS. Is it reasonable for me to expect--again, assuming everything else is right--to be able to run at 90+ percent without problems?
Richard Heritage Lead Systems Software Engineer IT @ Johns Hopkins
