We have SuSe enterprise linux 9 running on 6 zVM partitions.  We are
running VM in an IFL - one cpu on a z900.  One linux is the clone copy
that is pushed out to clone the other partitions.  One linux clone is
running a mail relay that isn't very busy.  Three linux are running
apache, tomcat, ant, cvs, and java.  These are not in production yet and
are not doing much of anything other than running all the applications.
One linux is supposed to be a Tivoli Gateway, but we continue to have
problems with Tivoli and Enterprise Linux 9.  

It appears a compile on any of the linux takes a very long time and
compares to a Pentium III processor speed.  Is this what we can expect
running linux under zVM?  We were anticipating we could eliminate 10 x86
servers at least.  Even though we were given a deal on the IFL, if it
cannot run 5-6 linux partitions, it does not make sense to add the
overhead of maintaining zVM.

One of the sys admins 'found a way to achieve the memory restrictions
for a Linux guest and still allow Tomcat/java to run.

There are a couple of kernel parameters that allow a process to malloc
more memory than is phycisally on the machine, specifically
/proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory.

We can use this and implement swapping to vdisk. By starting the guests
with say 100 MB of RAM, we should be able to limit the amount of RAM
used for file buffering. At the very least this should enable us to
create smaller footprint guests in RAM terms.

However, all that said, I'm still concerned we're trying to get Formula
One performance out of a pinto.

Are we going down the wrong path trying to run linux under zVM to
eliminate all the x86 boxes we have?  I would like to have feed back on
what kind of performance we can expect to get out of a 1 cpu z/VM on the
z900 IFL and how many linux can run there?

Ila Z. Miller
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University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics
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