System Memory Statistics

In an AMS environment, the amount of memory available will change as memory is loaned to other partitions by the Cooperative Memory Manager (CMM) module. This section will show how the total amount of memory provided to the partition is being utilized.

The fields here are taken from /proc/meminfo.

MemTotal

This value, expressed in kilobytes, is the maximum amount of memory available to the operating system.

MemFree

This value, displayed in kilobytes, is the amount of memory which is unused.

Buffers

The amount of memory, in kilobytes, used for file buffers.

Cached

The amount of memory, in kilobytes, used as cache memory.

Inactive

The total amount of buffer or page cache memory, in kilobytes, that are free and available. This is memory that has not been recently used and can be reclaimed for other purposes.

SwapTotal

The total amount of swap available, in kilobytes.

SwapFree

The total amount of swap free, in kilobytes.

DesMem

The desired memory field shows the amount of memory that firmware would like to to have currently assigned to the partition. This relates to the amount of assigned memory specified in the HMC or IVM however this value can be out-of-sync withe current amount of memory assigned to the operating system if dynamic memory add or remove operations have failed.

Entitlement Information

This information is specific to an AMS environment, the fields are taken from /proc/ppc64/lparcfg.

entitled_memory

The entitled_memory is a specific amount of memory given to the operating system that will be available to be mapped for IO operations; this guarantee is maintained by the platform firmware and can be tuned through the HMC or IVM depending on the particular environment. This value is displayed in kilobytes. The amount of entitled memory is changed by the HMC or IVM in response to hot-plug events or explicit tuning.

mapped_entitled_memory

The number of bytes of entitled_memory currently mapped for IO operations according to firmware.

entitled_memory_group_number

This value is assigned to the partition by firmware and can be used by support to help correlate operating system data with firmware data. It is not of use to the end user but is displayed for debug support.

entitled_memory_pool_number

This is the identification number of the shared memory pool to which this partition belongs.

entitled_memory_weight

This is the weighting that is used by firmware to help prioritize partitions for memory loaning.

entitled_memory_pool_size

This is the total size of the physical memory in the memory pool to which this partition belongs and includes memory that may not presently be accessible to the operating system.

entitled_memory_loan_request

The number of bytes which firmware would like the partition to give or take via the Cooperative Memory Manager (CMM). Positive values denote a request of how much memory, in bytes, it would like the operating system to loan to firmware. Negative values denote that the operating system may take back that number of bytes of memory for its own use.

backing_memory

This is the amount of physical memory, in bytes, that is currently reserved for access by this partition. This value does change over time based on load of all of the partitions in the shared memory pool. Use of memory in excess of this amount incurs performance penalties as loaning and paging will need to occur.

coalesced_bytes

The number of bytes of memory assigned to the logical partition which have been coalesced with identical pages either within the logical partition, or with another logical partition.

pool_coalesced_bytes

The number of bytes of memory in the shared memory pool which have been coalesced with identical pages.

cmo_enabled

When this value is 1 the partition is running in shared memory mode. A 0 in this field indicates that dedicated memory mode is enabled and the AMS kernel code will not be active.

cmo_faults

A fault occurs when an attempt to access memory is made where the platform firmware must suspend the partition and request data from disk. This value is a sum of the number of faults since the operating system was booted. Increases in this value indicate contention for memory between partitions in the AMS environment.

cmo_fault_time_usec

This value is a running sum of the amount of time, since boot time, that the operating system has been suspended by platform firmware to process cmo_faults. This value is given is microseconds (10^-6 or 0.0000001 seconds).

cmo_primary_psp

This is the identification number of the primary paging storage pool (psp).

cmo_secondary_psp

This is the identification number of the secondary paging storage pool (psp).

CMM Statistics

The Cooperative Memory Manager (CMM) module loans unused memory to firmware to be used by other partitions within the shared memory pool. The fields here are taken from /sys/module/cmm/parameters and /sys/devices/system/cmm/cmm0.

disable

The CMM code is disabled when this is set to 1 and is enabled when this value is 0. If CMM is disabled no loaning will occur.

debug

Set to 1, CMM will print debug information regarding the number of pages loaned, the loan request from firmware, etc to the console or system log.

min_mem_mb

This the amount of partition memory, in megabytes, which will be reserved from loaning.

oom_kb

The number of kilobytes of memory taken back from firmware by the CMM module for the operating system when an out of memory signal from the kernel is caught by CMM.

delay

This is the number of seconds that CMM waits between requests to firmware for the number of pages that firmware would like the operating system to loan.

loaned_kb

This is the amount of memory, in kilobytes, that the operating system has given back to the platform firmware to be used by other partitions. This value fluctuates to meet the demands of all of the partitions in the shared memory pool of an AMS environment.

loaned_target_kb

This is the amount of memory, in kilobytes, that the firmware would like the operating system to loan for use by other partitions. This value may be greater than loaned_kb if firmware would like additional pages to be loaned or it may be less than loaned_kb if firmware is providing additional pages to the operating system.

oom_freed_kb

The amount of memory, in kilobytes, that is no longer being loaned by CMM as a result of out-or-memory kernel signals.

VIO Bus Statistics

The VIO Bus manages the operating system's entitled memory for devices which may perform DMA operations. The data here is found in the /sys/bus/vio/ directory. The use of cmo is a historical reference to the AMS feature and is used interchangeably.

cmo_entitled

The entitled memory is a specific amount of memory given to the operating system that will be available to be mapped for IO operations; this guarantee is maintained by the platform firmware and can be tuned through the HMC or IVM depending on the particular environment. This value is displayed in kilobytes. The amount of entitled memory is changed by the HMC or IVM in response to hot-plug events or explicit tuning.

cmo_reserve_size

The entitled memory is split into two pools, the first of which is the reserve pool. This value, expressed in kilobytes, represents the amount of memory guaranteed to individual devices on the bus.

cmo_excess_size

This pool contains any amount of entitled memory not placed in the reserve pool; the value is displayed in kilobytes. Any device can map memory from this pool for IO operations, after having used up its own allocation from the reserve pool, until the excess pool is exhausted.

cmo_excess_free

This value represents the amount of memory, in kilobytes, currently available for devices to use from the excess pool.

cmo_spare

This value represents the amount of memory, in kilobytes, kept unused to handle hot-plug events, entitlement rebalancing between devices, and module loading.

cmo_min

This value represents the current minimum amount of entitlement that the operating system could function with based on the ideal size of the spare allocation plus a small allocation for each device present in the system. Requests to change system entitlement below this value will fail. Setting entitlement to this value may impact performance, but should allow the system to make forward progress, the ideal value is displayed in cmo_desired below.

cmo_desired

Each device in the system that requires memory for mapping IO operations will specify an amount of memory which is desired for optimal performance. This value is the sum of the requests made by individual devices on the bus and is measured in kilobytes.

cmo_curr

This value represents the amount of memory, in kilobytes, that is currently mapped by device drivers for IO operations.

cmo_high

This value, measured in kilobytes, represents the largest amount of memory mapped at any one point in time since the system was booted or the field was last reset. This value can be reset by writing a '0' to the file /sys/bus/vio/cmo_high.

VIO Device Statistics

Each device that is configured and performs DMA operations will appear listed beneath this heading. The devices are displayed by their location on the VIO bus nd the data is pulled from /sys/bus/vio/devices/<device name>/*. For each device the following are shown:

cmo_desired

The amount of memory, in kilobytes, that the device has requested from the bus to provide optimal performance. The amount of cmo_entitled memory will not exceed this amount. The device may receive a memory entitlement less than its desired level in cases where resources are limited.

cmo_entitled

The amount of memory, in kilobytes, that the device is guaranteed that it may map for IO operations. The allocation of this entitled memory is made to the device from the bus' cmo_reserve_pool.

cmo_allocated

The amount of memory, in kilobytes, that the device has currently mapped for IO operations.

cmo_allocs_failed

When the amount of memory allocated (cmo_allocated) has exhausted both the entitled memory (cmo_entitled) and the bus' excess pool, memory mapping failures will occur. For each failed attempt, the value displayed here will increase by 1. Large changes in this value would indicate resource contention that may require system tuning. The device drivers are written such that these failures, while impacting performance, do not impede functionality. To reset this counter, the value '0' can be written to the file /sys/bus/vio/devices/<device name>/cmo_allocs_failed.