As part of the continuing series on AIX 7, a new series on optimizing memory performance is now available. Part 1:
AIX® 7 takes advantage of the POWER7 CPU to improve memory usage within LPARs. While memory tuning might be more difficult to implement than processor or disk tuning, it is no less important. You can do more to tune memory on an AIX 7 server than on any other subsystem. Changing some memory parameters on your system can increase performance dramatically, particularly when these parameters are not optimized for the environment which you are running. This three-part series on memory tuning dives right into tuning parameters focusing on the many challenges and the various best practices of optimizing memory performance, and it also discusses some improvements in AIX 6 and AIX 7. Part 1 provides an overview of memory on AIX 7, including a discussion of virtual memory and the Virtual Memory Manager (VMM).
Optimizing AIX 7 memory performance: Part 1, Memory overview and tuning memory parametersPart 2:
Use ps, sar, svmon, and vmstat to monitor memory usage and analyze the results. This three-part series focuses on the various aspects of memory management and tuning on IBM System p™ servers running AIX® 7, including taking advantage of the POWER7 CPU to improve memory usage within LPARs. Part 2 of the series focuses on the detail of actual memory subsystem monitoring and discusses how to analyze the results. Throughout the series, we also cover some of the best practices of memory performance tuning and monitoring.
Get an introduction to swap (paging) space, learn how to configure and administer it, capture statistics, and tune your Virtual Memory Manager (VMM) settings to provide for optimum swap (paging) space configuration and performance. With AIX 7, and the improvements for the POWER7 architecture, extracting the best performance out of your memory environment is critical. With the larger memory capacity and CPU cores, a better understanding of the VMM and your configuration will help you change your parameters to fit your requirements.
Optimizing AIX 7 memory performance: Part 3, Tuning swap space settings