[RichardB]

Ive got a p570 with 8cpu's

pool1 has
Reserved Processing Units 0.8
Max Processing Units 3

lpar1 has
Processing Units
Minimum processing units : 0.1
Desired processing units : 0.2
Maximum processing units : 2.0
Shared processor pool: pool1

Virtual Processes
Minimum virtual processors : 1.0
Desired virtual processors : 1.0
Maximum virtual processors : 2.0

So I would have thought that lpar1 would have been able to use upto 2cpu's but no matter how hard I hammer it I only ever see 1 physc and 500 %entc

System configuration: type=Shared mode=Uncapped smt=On lcpu=2 mem=4096 psize=3 ent=0.20
%user %sys %wait %idle physc %entc lbusy vcsw phint %hypv hcalls
----- ----- ------ ------ ----- ----- ------ ----- ----- ------ ------
90.5 9.5 0.0 0.0 1.00 500.2 99.8 206 109 3.9 122416
90.4 9.6 0.0 0.0 0.99 492.9 97.3 214 97 43.1 115451
91.3 8.6 0.0 0.0 0.95 472.6 93.0 217 87 4.5 107215
91.2 8.8 0.0 0.0 1.00 499.7 100.0 200 110 3.5 118949
90.4 9.6 0.0 0.0 1.00 499.7 100.0 200 233 4.1 128249

[ross.mather]

The crux of this is the desired Virtual CPUs. If the desired Virtual CPUs is one then the server cannot use more than 1 whole Physical CPU. It can use less but it cannot fold multiple CPUs into one virtual device. So seeing CPU usage of 500% in the most that the LPAR can use.

If you want more oomph to be used set the Maximum Virtual CPUs to 8 and then dynamically up the number of Virtual CPUs being used to 8 will then maximise the CPU it uses. For each Virtual CPU you define the LPAR needs to have 0.1 Physical CPU defined.

You didn't mention any Virtual I/O servers, but if you have then then they will also need CPU.

When I define LPARS I always define max CPU and Max Virtual CPU to be the number of CPUs then you can dynamically up thiongs to cope with any required additional load.