Graphical User Interface › Class Editor -- Simple Appliances › Resources Tab

Resources Tab

The Resources tab allows you to specify the amount of hardware resources that are needed for each instance of this appliance. You can select amount of CPU (percentage of a full CPU), memory and bandwidth needed by the appliance.

Resource types and specification

The following resource types can be specified:

CPU

Portion of a CPU to be allocated for each instance. Portions can be specified as percentage (for example, 10%) or as a decimal number (0.10).
The maximum amount of CPU for a simple appliance is 100% or 1.0.

Memory

Amount of memory to be allocated for each instance. The amount can be specified as an integer value in Megabytes (for example, 128M) or in Gigabytes (for example, 2G). For 32-bit Linux appliances, the memory should be at least 32M and no more than 3G.

Bandwidth

Amount of network bandwidth to be allocated for each instance (total for all terminals/interfaces). The amount can be specified as an integer value in Megabits/sec (for example, 10M) or in Gigabits/sec (for example, 1G). The maximum amount of bandwidth for a simple appliance is 2G (a full duplex Gigabit Ethernet port).
See here for an important note regarding resource oversubscription of network bandwidth.

Resource ranges

You can specify a range for each resource type. The range defines the normal operating parameters desired for the appliance, and minimum resource requirements for sandbox use.

Minimum

The absolute minimum amount of a resource that the appliance needs to work at all. This is useful to allow running the appliance in functional testing environments, where the appliance is not expected to run under production load and can run with much less resources. Contrast this with the Default below, which is amount of resources needed for production use.

Maximum

The maximum amount of a resource that the appliance will be allowed to take. Typically this is the maximum that an appliance can use (that is, giving it more resources will not increase performance). The appliance will not be allocated more than the specified maximum amount, helping ensure that the appliance will not be able to take resources away from other appliances -- think of it as a quota.

Default

The minimum amount of a resource that the appliance requires for normal operation in production environments. The appliance will not be started unless at least that much can be allocated for it (likely failing the start of the application as a whole). Specifying a minimum helps ensure that the appliance will work within certain "guaranteed" resource amount -- think of it as a service level agreement (SLA) for that resource.

Notes

• Leave the broadest reasonable range for all resources. The amount of resources actually allocated for an instance of the appliance can be further constrained by the instance settings of the appliance.
• The degree, to which the resource ranges are enforced varies, based on the underlying virtualization technology used by CA AppLogic® for System z.
• In this release, the CPU minimum is guaranteed and the maximum is enforced only if other appliances need the CPU; the memory minimum and maximum are strictly enforced; the bandwidth minimum and maximum are not enforced at all -- they are used only to make scheduling decisions. As a result, it is guaranteed that an appliance will get its minimum CPU and memory. It may not get its full bandwidth, if another appliance is scheduled on the same server and hogs the bandwidth. We expect the bandwidth guarantee to be provided in a future version. In the meantime, we can help devising a solution for particular problems you may have with this limitation.