In a previous post I discussed how you can identify some of the different types of a PowerVM Capacity on Demand (CoD) activation keys from IBM.

Recently I had to Activate Memory Expansion (AME) on a couple of POWER7 systems. I discovered that all of the keys contained a similar string. It appears that if a CoD key contains the string CA1F0000000800 then it is safe to assume it will activate AME for a particular system. e.g.

9741EF3AE6969F17CA1F0000000800419D

937A1240F00F5B05CA1F0000000800413D

And while Im talking about AME, I thought Id share this tip as well.

I was performing a demo of AME for my team and wanted to change the AME expansion factor using DLPAR during the demo. I did not want to use the HMC GUI but rather the HMC command line (as its faster).

To change the expansion factor for an LPAR (thats enabled for AME), you can use the chhwres command from the HMC CLI.

During the demo I highlighted the current (running) expansion factor for the LPAR (using the lshwres command).

hscroot@hmc1:~> lshwres -m 795-1 -r mem --level lpar --filter "lpar_ids=189"

lpar_name=aixlpar1,lpar_id=89,curr_min_mem=1024,curr_mem=4096,curr_max_mem=32768,pend_min_mem=1024,pend_mem=4096,pend_max_mem=32768,run_min_mem=1024,run_mem=4096,curr_min_num_huge_pages=0,curr_num_huge_pages=0,curr_max_num_huge_pages=0,pend_min_num_huge_pages=0,pend_num_huge_pages=0,pend_max_num_huge_pages=0,run_num_huge_pages=0,mem_mode=ded,curr_mem_expansion=2.0,pend_mem_expansion=2.0,curr_hpt_ratio=1:64,curr_bsr_arrays=0

Then I increased the expansion factor from 2.0 to 3.0 (using DLPAR).

hscroot@hmc1:~> chhwres -r mem -m 795-1 -o s -p aixlpar1 -a "mem_expansion=3"

Using the lshwres command I then confirmed that the expansion factor changed (from the HMC command line).

hscroot@hmc1:~> lshwres -m 795-1 -r mem --level lpar --filter "lpar_ids=189"

lpar_name=aixlpar1,lpar_id=89,curr_min_mem=1024,curr_mem=4096,curr_max_mem=32768,pend_min_mem=1024,pend_mem=4096,pend_max_mem=32768,run_min_mem=1024,run_mem=4096,curr_min_num_huge_pages=0,curr_num_huge_pages=0,curr_max_num_huge_pages=0,pend_min_num_huge_pages=0,pend_num_huge_pages=0,pend_max_num_huge_pages=0,run_num_huge_pages=0,mem_mode=ded,curr_mem_expansion=3.0,pend_mem_expansion=3.0,curr_hpt_ratio=1:64,curr_bsr_arrays=0

I also ran the lparstat command on the LPAR (before and after the DLPAR operation) to demonstrate the changed expansion factor value and the increase in expanded memory size.

aixlpar1 : / # lparstat -i | grep Exp

Memory Mode : Dedicated-Expanded

Target Memory Expansion Factor : 2.00

Target Memory Expansion Size : 8192 MB

aixlpar1 : /# lparstat -i | grep Exp

Memory Mode : Dedicated-Expanded

Target Memory Expansion Factor : 3.00

Target Memory Expansion Size : 12288 MB