AIX > Trends > AIX

Improve Your Operations with New CoD Features

IBM recently enhanced its Capacity on Demand (CoD) offerings for the new POWER7+ 770 and 780 servers and updated POWER7 795 server. These enhancements provide new operational features and financial benefits. A closer look might change your perspective on CoD from a usage model for special circumstances to one for mainstream, day-to-day use.

Enterprise class Power Systems servers can be configured with CoD processor cores and memory that are readily available when needed. CoD resources can be enabled with:

1. Capacity Upgrade on Demand (CUoD permanent activation)
2. Elastic CoD
3. Utility CoD (cores only)
4. Trial CoD

Elastic CoD

For this article, I’ll focus on the recent enhancements to Elastic CoD, which is a new name for what was previously called On/Off CoD. This name change is meant to emphasize the new features being offered.

Like On/Off CoD, Elastic CoD allows you to activate CoD resources in 1 processor core and 1 GB memory increments. Processor cores and memory can be activated independently of one another. To get started, Elastic CoD enablement keys must be entered at the Hardware Management Console (HMC). When these resources are needed, the desired amounts of processor cores or memory are activated via the HMC. Resource use must be reported to IBM monthly and is billed quarterly. The monthly reporting requirement can be automated through an HMC connected to IBM via Electronic Service Agent.

With the previous On/Off CoD implementation, the enablement keys permitted the use of up to 360 processor days and 999 GB memory days. Upon reaching one of these limits, a new enablement key had to be ordered. Some customers found themselves in a situation where they had to frequently re-order enablement keys. For example, if you were to activate 16 cores for a temporary project, 360 processor days would be consumed in just 22 days. Likewise, if you activated 64 GB of memory, it would take just 15 days to reach the 999 GB memory days permitted.

A new 90-day Elastic CoD offering provides the ability to activate all CoD processor cores and memory for a full 90-days per enablement key. This will eliminate the requirement to frequently reorder the enablement keys for heavy users of CoD resources.

Tweet