Additional Enhancements to z/VM 6.3
In addition to these enhancements, also refer to the
required service for z/VM to run on the IBM z13
and
additional z/VM enhancements that are
only available on the IBM z13.
Performance Toolkit Support
Provides Performance Toolkit
support for CPU pooling, prorated core time, LPAR group
capping.
Requirements
- APARs/PTFs (available February 29, 2016)
- VM - APAR VM65697 / PTF UM34756
Guest Support of the Vector Facility for z/Architecture (SIMD)
Enables guests to exploit the Vector Facility
for z/Architecture (SIMD). The Vector Facility instructions provide a
powerful framework for
development of new Business Analytics workloads, porting
numerically intensive workloads
from other platforms, and accelerating Business Analytics workloads on
IBM z13 or IBM z13s.
Requirements
- APARs/PTFs (available February 23, 2016)
- VM - APAR VM65733 / PTF UM34752
z/VM Support of the IBM z13 with Driver D27
-
LPAR Group Absolute Capacity Capping enables each partition to consume
capacity up
to its individual limit so long as the group's aggregate consumption does
not exceed its
absolute capacity limit.
-
Guest exploitation support of Shared Memory Communications-Direct Memory
Access (SMC-D) networking within the CPC without requiring 10 GbE
RoCE hardware or external switches.
-
Dynamic Memory Management improves the efficiency when a dynamic memory
upgrade uses only a portion of the reserved main storage for the
partition by initializing and clearing just the amount of storage
requested.
Requirements
- APARs/PTFs (available February 18, 2016)
- VM - APAR VM65716 / PTF UM34746
z/VM Single System Image (SSI) Persistent Data Record (PDR)
Allows the SSI Persistent Data Record to be relocated from its
current DASD to another in a
coordinated and nondisruptive manner.
Requirements
- APARs/PTFs (available February 8, 2016)
- VM - APAR VM65712 / PTF UM34736
Enhancements to RACF for z/VM Feature
Enhancements to RACF for z/VM Feature include
an upgrade of
password encryption support
for stronger protection against offline password attacks.
This is functionally equivalent to z/OS APAR OA43999 and provides a
new KDFAES
password encryption algorithm which can be specified on the SETROPTS
command. Additional enhancements to RACFVM security policy
management include:
- Minimum password change intervals
- Helpdesk support for the resetting of passwords and password phrases
- Password expiry support
- An upgrade to special character support for passwords and password
phrases
Requirements
- APARs/PTFs (available September 11, 2015)
- RACF - APAR VM65719 / PTF UV61271 (also requires RACF - APAR VM65688 / PTF UV61261)
Enhancements to z/VM System SSL Library and TLS/SSL Server
An uplift has been made to
the z/VM System SSL cryptographic library to z/OS V2.1
equivalency, which keeps z/VM's TLS support in accordance with NIST SP
800-131a guidelines. This upgrade includes AES Galois/Counter Mode
encryption for connections to the hypervisor managed by the z/VM TLS/SSL
Server.
Requirements
- APARs/PTFs (available September 11, 2015)
- TCP/IP - APAR PI40702 / PTF UI31015
- CMS - APAR VM65717 / PTF UM34663
- LE - APAR VM65718 / PTF UM34668
Prorated Core Time Support
Prorated core time is a method that provides reports and caps based on
core utilization regardless of the multithreading benefit, which might
be used as a means of distributing charges for subcapacity based products
that are based on core capacity. Time is charged by dividing the time
the core was dispatched evenly among the threads dispatched in that
interval.
Under this method, the total time charged to all guests equals the total
time the logical cores of the z/VM partition were dispatched. Prorated
core time is calculated for all users only when multithreading is
enabled, and used in the limiting calculations of CPU pools and guests
with individual LIMITHARD shares.
Requirements
- APARs/PTFs (available September 11, 2015)
- VM - APAR VM65680 / PTF UM34667
CPU Pooling
With z/VM V6.3 you now have the ability to
define new entities called CPU pools. CPU pooling is designed to allow
you to define and limit the CPU resources a group of z/VM guests is
allowed to consume in aggregate (in terms of physical processor units
- general purpose processor (CP) or Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL)
speciality engine).
Requirements
- APARs/PTFs (available June 11, 2014)
- VM - APAR VM65418 / PTF UM34348
Environment Information Interface
A new interface in z/VM V6.3 has been designed to provide you the
ability to obtain CPU resource information and to enable virtual machines to understand the
characteristics of the environment in which they are running.
Information is provided at many levels - the machine,
logical partition, CPU pool, virtual machine.
Requirements
- APARs/PTFs (available June 11, 2014)
- VM - APAR VM65419 / PTF UM34348
10GbE RoCE Express Feature
z/OS guests
running under z/VM V6.3 may now exploit the 10GbE RoCE Express
feature. The term RoCE refers to Remote Direct Memory Access over
Converged Ethernet. The 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) RoCE Express
feature is designed to help reduce consumption of CPU resources for
applications utilizing the TCP/IP stack (such as WebSphere Applications to understand the
Server accessing a DB2 database). Use of the 10GbE RoCE Express
feature is designed to help reduce network latency with
memory-to-memory
transfers utilizing Shared Memory Communications-Remote
Direct Memory Access (SMC-R) in z/OS V2.1. It is transparent to
applications and can be used for LPAR-to-LPAR communication on
a single system or server-to-server communication in a multiple-CPC
environment.
Requirements
- Hardware
- IBM zEC12 or zBC12, driver 15, bundle 21
- APARs/PTFs
- VM CP -
APAR VM65417 / PTF UM34343
- VM CMS -
APAR VM65437 / PTF UM34401
- VM TCP/IP -
APAR PI20509 / PTF UI19055
- VM DVF -
APAR VM65572 / PTF UM34342
- z/OS 2.1 -
APAR OA43256 / PTF UA72717
For more
information about enabling and configuring z/VM for guest
exploitation of RoCE,
click here
zEDC Express Feature
z/OS guests running
under z/VM V6.3 may now exploit the zEDC Express feature. IBM
zEnterprise Data Compression (zEDC) for z/OS V2.1 and the zEDC
Express feature are designed to support a new data compression
function to help provide high-performance, low-latency compression
without significant CPU overhead. This may help to reduce disk usage,
provide optimized cross-platform exchange of data, and provide higher
write rates for SMF data.
Requirements
- Hardware
- IBM zEC12 or zBC12, driver 15, bundle 21
- APARs/PTFs
- VM CP -
APAR VM65417 / PTF UM34343
- VM CMS -
APAR VM65437 / PTF UM34401
- VM TCP/IP -
APAR PI20509 / PTF UI19055
- VM DVF -
APAR VM65572 / PTF UM34342
- z/OS 2.1 -
APAR OA44482 / PTF UA73687
- z/OS 2.1 -
APAR OA43256 / PTF UA72717
For more
information about enabling and configuring z/VM for guest
exploitation of zEDC,
click here