Adam Thornton writes:
> On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 10:58, Walter Wojcik wrote:
> > Does anyone have experience running zLinux in an LPAR which has multiple
> > CPUs defined?  We have experienced negative performance characteristics
> > with Intel Linux versions (RedHat, SUSSE) when the Intel machine had 4
> > processors.  We were wondering if the same performance degradations appear
> > on the mainframe.
>
> Without addressing your actual question at all:
>
> If you need 4 engines in an LPAR, I would question whether the zSeries
> is the right tool for the job.  You're clearly doing something pretty
> computationally-intensive at that point, and machine cycles on other
> hardware are generally a whole lot cheaper.  I'd take a look at the app
> design and see if there isn't some way to offload the CPU-intensive
> stuff to a different box, and keep the I/O-intensive stuff on the
> zSeries.

Both the original question and this response are rather ambiguous.
I suspect that when Adam refers to "4 engines in an LPAR", he is
thinking of Linux running by itself (no z/VM) in that LPAR and that he
assumes the original poster means the same. When I read the original
question, I assumed it was just a question about scalability and that
the LPAR would be using z/VM to run multiple Linux guests, some of
which may, at times, want to peak at using 4 CPUs. Provided the sizing
is done properly and any such peaks "separate out" nicely, I would
imagine zSeries would do a very good job given the excellent "raw"
scaling capability of zSeries (as others have said) and the wonders of
z/VM to provide such "time-shift" sharing. If the original poster
really did mean a 4-way LPAR with Linux running "native" in it, then
my response is irrelevant of course (though I can still think of
some interesting configurations: some CPU-intensive applications
may simply need all that CPU in order to drive even larger amounts of
I/O that the hardware is good at).

--Malcolm

--
Malcolm Beattie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Linux Technical Consultant
IBM EMEA Enterprise Server Group...
...from home, speaking only for myself

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