Once more on memory tuning

After sending my AIX memory tunings to the list, I received feedback from
members who had different results.  So I revisited the tunings.  I found that
MAXperm has an even greater influence than MINperm.

I now have settings I am comfortable with and have no intention to change.  They
are shown below.  I included a VMSTAT trace farther down to show my results.
Operationally, the system displays almost instant response to all queries,
sessions, etc.  This is MUCH better than it worked when I began my tuning
experiments.

For those just tuning in:
  AIX 4.3.2.0
  ADSM 3.1.2.55
  RS/6000 7025 F50
  2 x 332 MHz CPUs
  512 MB RAM
  21.5 GB database, 87% utilized
  4.4 GB recovery log

These are my current VMTUNE settings:

# vmtune
vmtune:  current values:
  -p       -P        -r          -R         -f       -F       -N        -W
minperm  maxperm  minpgahead maxpgahead  minfree  maxfree  pd_npages maxrandwrt
  32765    78637       2         64        256      340     524288        0

  -M      -w      -k      -c        -b         -B           -u        -l
maxpin npswarn npskill numclust numfsbufs hd_pbuf_cnt lvm_bufcnt lrubucket defps
104851    8192    2048       1      93        305          9      131072     1

        -s
sync_release_ilock
        0

number of valid memory pages = 131063   maxperm=60.0% of real memory
maximum pinable=80.0% of real memory    minperm=25.0% of real memory
number of file memory pages = 78202     numperm=59.7% of real memory

Non-default settings are minperm (-p), maxperm (-P), maxpgahead (-R), minfree
(-f), and maxfree (-F).

This is today's results from a 2-second vmstat trace.  While this trace was
taken there were:
1 high data rate archive session running;
7 migrations from four disk pools to four tape libraries;
1 tape-to-tape backup to my copypool.

# vmstat 2 20
kthr     memory             page              faults        cpu
----- ----------- ------------------------ ------------ -----------
 r  b   avm   fre  re  pi  po  fr   sr  cy  in   sy  cs us sy id wa
 r  b   avm   fre  re  pi  po  fr   sr  cy  in   sy  cs us sy id wa
 0  0 63361   378   0   1   0 271   18   0  29  231  39  3  7 65 25
 2  6 63361   330   0   2   0 5022 22015   0 1975 2397 1791 16 44  0 40
 2  7 63361   276   0   0   0 4287 11312   0 1712 1945 1540 12 35  0 53
 1  8 63361   319   0   1   0 4605 12988   0 2008 1976 1510 16 38  0 46
 0  8 63361   340   0   0   0 4393 13024   0 1615 1729 1270 16 35  0 49
 2  6 63361   319   0   0   0 3591 9545   0 1757 1703 1326 17 29  0 54
 0  6 63361   276   0   0   0 3605 10675   0 1745 1918 1363 18 32  0 51
 0  5 63361   319   0   0   0 3583 13813   0 1696 1620 1334 16 32  0 52
 3  5 63361   340   0   0   0 3752 12417   0 1796 1700 1395 16 32  0 52
 0  6 63361   273   0   0   0 3727 12561   0 1535 1469 1272 16 34  0 50
 3  6 63361   296   0   0   0 4302 14887   0 1650 1405 1182 18 32  0 50
 0  7 63361   327   0   2   0 4235 17390   0 1602 1499 1245 16 33  0 51
 3  5 63361   291   0   2   0 4366 11003   0 1799 1864 1455 13 38  0 49
 0  6 63361   340   0  32   0 4013 11974   0 1693 1823 1481 18 33  0 48
 2  5 63361   381   0   0   3 4758 13404   0 1712 1660 1250 12 38  0 49
 1  6 63361   340   0   0  13 3991 10720   0 1551 1653 1263 18 31  0 52
 2  6 63361   277   0   0   0 3719 12337   0 1816 1660 1236 16 32  0 52
 0  6 63361   340   0   0   0 4031 16150   0 1481 1529 1217 18 34  0 49
 0  5 63361   340   0   0   0 3624 11082   0 1826 2001 1522 16 34  0 49
 1  6 63361   381   0   0   0 4708 13347   0 1447 1519 1199 19 36  0 46

Note that with all this I/O activity, and while freeing (fr) 3000-5000 pages in
each 2-second period, paging to/from disk (pi/po) stays at or near zero and free
memory (fre) never bottoms out.

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