Performance Improvements
Large Enhancements
With the change to continuous delivery, IBM has shipped most of the recent new z/VM function as PTFs to z/VM 7.1 instead of waiting for a release boundary. We evaluated some of those PTFs and wrote articles about them. For more information, refer to our z/VM 7.1 page.
Some z/VM 7.1 PTFs providing performance or capacity improvement were not evaluated for this report. Those were:
PI99085: z/VM TCP/IP support for the OSA Express7S card.
VM65786: Remove limit of number of users who can belong to a resource pool.
VM66248: Support the z15 and LinuxONE III processors.
VM66263: Support EAV ECKD volumes.
VM66283: Support System Recovery Boost.
Small Enhancements
In our considerations chapter we mentioned some changes clients might like to consider before they migrate to z/VM 7.2. For details, refer to that chapter.
Service Since z/VM 7.1
z/VM 7.2 contains a number of performance-related repairs that were first shipped as service to earlier releases. Because IBM refreshes this report only occasionally, IBM has not yet had a chance to mention these PTFs.
VM65686: Perfkit will sometimes show impossibly high percent-busy in FCX100.
VM66154: Enforce ABSOLUTE LIMITHARD correctly. Note: this went PE. Also apply VM66400.
VM65730: Improve performance of SET RDEV commands that specify large ranges of device numbers.
VM66282: Fix unduly long wait for an EDEV to vary on.
VM65858: Improve respect of relative share for guests in a CPU pool.
VM66302: Streamline vswitch interruption processing.
Miscellaneous Repairs
IBM continually improves z/VM in response to customer-reported or IBM-reported defects or suggestions. In z/VM 7.2 the following small improvements or repairs are notable:
Excessive host Diag x'9C's: HCPHVR now avoids SIGP Sense Running and Diag x'9C' if the target logical processor is a vertical-high.
Excessive recursion: Removes excessive recursion in the SCSI container with respect to the deferred work queue.
VSwitch performance: Better management of opening of dispatch window.