Advanced Power Virtualization on IBM eserver p5 Servers: Architecture And Performance Considerations

by IBM Redbooks, Margo Pulles

This IBM Redbook addresses the issues surrounding performance of the IBM System p5 and IBM p5 systems. Many features that have been introduced in these systems are discussed in this book.The new systems use the POWER5 processors, which consist of a dual processor core with each core supporting two hardware threads of execution. This technology is referred to as simultaneous multithreading. We provide an in-depth look into the POWER5 processor architecture.The POWER Hypervisor has been enhanced, so detailed descriptions of POWER Hypervisor and Hypervisor system calls are given.This book also covers the concepts of virtual processors, virtual storage, and virtual networking, which are also part of the new systems.With all of these new technologies and features, system administrators must realize the performance impact they may have. We look at these performance issues by providing the results of performance tests that were conducted in the course of writing.

Paperback