Activating Processors

The icod_modify command provides the ability to increase processing capacity instantly by activating licensed processors in nPartitions (hard partitions) of Instant Capacity systems. At any time, any number of inactive (licensed) processors can be activated, in accordance with complex-wide compliance. See “Instant Capacity Integration with Virtual Partitions” for details about activation in virtual partitions.

Activating Processors in nPartitions

The software provides two types of activation:

Instant activation of processors occurs when the icod_modify command is used with either the -a or -s option, and the -D option is not specified.

Deferred activation of processors occurs when the icod_modify command is used with both the -D option and either the -a or -s option specified. With the deferred option (-D), processor activation occurs after a reboot of the partition. The scheduled timing of the reboot (and the processor activation) can take place at a planned time. For example, if you activate processors in deferred activation mode and schedule a partition reboot to occur on the first day of the next month, the processors are activated at that time.

	IMPORTANT: Always use the shutdown command when shutting down or rebooting a partition with Instant Capacity. See the manpage shutdown(1M) for information on the shutdown command.

Deferred activation does change the quantity of activated and inactivated processing capacity, even if the partition reboot has not yet occurred. Complex-wide compliance checking is calculated as if the activation had not been deferred.

Constraints

The Instant Capacity software will not activate a processor that is marked for deconfiguration. Also, you cannot use Instant Capacity to activate more processors than are configured in the current nPartition. If you want more, you need to modify the nPartition with the parmodify command. You can use Instant Capacity to activate more processors than are configured into the current virtual partition, but only if the associated nPartition contains enough unassigned processors to fulfill the request. Otherwise, you need to use parmodify to reconfigure the nPartitions, or vparmodify to remove processors from other virtual partitions within the same nPartition (essentially, adding to the unassigned pool).

To activate one or more inactive processors, use the icod_modify command as root. See the manpage icod_modify(1M) for details.

Instant Capacity Activation Example Session

The following example shows you how to activate an additional licensed processor. At the beginning of this activation session, there are a total of 4 processors in the partition; 2 processors are activated and 2 are inactive licensed processors. In this example, 1 additional processor is activated, leaving the partition with 3 active processors and 1 inactive processor:

Example 4-3 Activating an Additional Processor

/usr/sbin/icod_modify -a 1 “Add CPU for new FY: Bill P.”

3 processors are now active, and 3 processors are specified to be active after the next reboot.

Points of interest in the above activation example are:

• The processor activation is instant (that is, a reboot is not required).

• The double-quoted text serves as an audit trail of why the activation was done and who performed it. This information is optional and is written to the Instant Capacity log file (var/adm/icod.log) if provided.

• You do not specify a particular processor to be activated; the software allows one (unspecified) additional processor to be activated.

	NOTE: To defer the activation (until the next reboot) add the -D option to the command. See the manpage icod_modify(1M) for details.

The icod_modify command allows you to activate additional processors with the -a option, or set the total number of active processors with the -s option. For example, the icod_modify command/option -a 2 activates two additional processors in a partition. The icod_modify command/option -s 2 sets the total number of active processors in a partition to 2.

See “Software Application Considerations” for details of software application implications when activating additional processors.