PROCESSOR RESOURCE CAPACITY MANAGEMENT IN AN INFORMATION HANDLING SYSTEM

• US 20120204186A1
• Filed: 02/09/2011
• Published: 08/09/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 02/09/2011
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Davidson, Grover Cleveland II, Michel, Dirk, Olszewski, Bret Ronald, Villarreal, Marcos A.
• Application Number:
  US13/023,550
• Publication Number:
  US 20120204186A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/104
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4881 Scheduling strategies for dispatcher, e.g. round robin, multi-level priority queues
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5077 Logical partitioning of resources; Management or configuration of virtualized resources specific details on emulation or internal functioning of virtual machines G06F9/455

Abstract

An operating system or virtual machine of an information handling system (IHS) initializes a resource manager to provide processor resource utilization management during workload or application execution. The resource manager captures short term interval (STI) and long term interval (LTI) processor resource utilization data and stores that utilization data within an information store of the virtual machine. If a capacity on demand mechanism is enabled, the resource manager modifies a reserved capacity value. The resource manager selects previous STI and LTI values for comparison with current resource utilization and may apply a safety margin to generate a reserved capacity or target resource utilization value for the next short term interval (STI). The hypervisor may modify existing virtual processor allocation to match the target resource utilization.

Claims

1-8. -8. (canceled)

9. An information handling system (IHS) comprising:

a plurality of physical processors that include processor resources;

a memory, coupled to the plurality of physical processors, the memory including a virtual machine that includes a plurality of virtual processors that execute a workload, the memory including a resource manager that is configured to;

store short term interval (STI) information that includes processor resource usage over at least one first predetermined time interval;

store long term interval (LTI) information that includes processor resource usage over at least one second predetermined time interval that is longer than the at least one first predetermined time interval

determine a reserved processor resource capacity that corresponds to a capacity related to the LTI information;

select STI information of at least one first predetermined time interval as previous short term interval (PSTI) information;

select LTI information of at least one second predetermined time interval as previous long term interval (PLTI) information; and

determine a minimum processor resource capacity by selecting the larger of the PSTI information and the PLTI information as the minimum processor resource capacity.

10. The IHS of claim 9, wherein the physical processor resources are adjusted to match a target physical processor count (PPC) for a next STI.

11. The IHS of claim 10 wherein the resource manager applies a safety margin to the minimum processor resource capacity to generate a target physical processor consumed (PPC) value, the applying of the safety margin being implemented before adjusting the physical processor resources to match the target PPC for the next STI.

12. The IHS of claim 10, wherein the resource manager determines if a capacity on demand (COD) mechanism is enabled, and in response to a finding that the COD mechanism is enabled, the resource manager scales the reserved processor resource capacity to reduce minimum processor resource capacity.

13. The IHS of claim 10, wherein the processor resources include at least one of processors, physical processor cores, virtual processor cores and software threads.

14. The IHS of claim 9, wherein the resource manager provides a different safety margin for each of a plurality of workloads.

15. The IHS of claim 10, wherein the resource manager retains control of unused processor resources that result from adjusting the physical processor resources.

16. A resource manager computer program product, comprising:

a computer readable storage medium for use on an information handling system (IHS) that executes a workload, the IHS including a plurality of physical processors that include processor resources, the memory including an operating system;

first instructions that store short term interval (STI) information that includes processor resource usage over at least one first predetermined time interval;

second instructions that store long term interval (LTI) information that includes processor resource usage over at least one second predetermined time interval that is longer than the at least one first predetermined time interval;

third instructions that determine a reserved processor resource capacity that corresponds to a capacity related to the LTI information;

fourth instructions that select STI information of at least one first predetermined time interval as previous short term interval (PSTI) information;

fifth instructions that select LTI information of at least one second predetermined time interval as previous long term interval (PLTI) information; and

sixth instructions that determine a minimum processor resource capacity by selecting the larger of the PSTI information and the PLTI information as the minimum processor resource capacity;

wherein the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth instructions are stored on the computer readable storage medium.

17. The resource manager computer program product of claim 16, further comprising seventh instructions that adjust the physical processor resources to match a target physical processor count (PPC) for a next STI.

18. The resource manager computer program product of claim 17, further comprising eighth instructions that apply a safety margin to the minimum processor resource capacity to generate a target physical processor consumed (PPC) value, the applying of the safety margin being implemented before the seventh instruction adjust the physical processor resources to match the target PPC for the next STI.

19. The resource manager computer program product of claim 17, further comprising ninth instructions that determine if a capacity on demand (COD) mechanism is enabled, and in response to a finding that the COD mechanism is enabled, the ninth instructions scale the reserved processor resource capacity to reduce minimum processor resource capacity.

20. The resource manager computer program product of claim 16, further comprising tenth instructions that provide a different safety margin for each of a plurality of workloads.