Capacity on Demand (CoD) is a feature of IBM's Power Systems designed to provide an easier way to upgrade your server resources when the need arises.

The idea is that you purchase a server with a certain number of processor and memory units, but only pay to activate those that you initially require. A year or so down the line when your resource requirements have increased, you can purchase the activation of more resources and enable these without interruption to your services.

The main choices you have are:

• Capacity Upgrade on Demand: Permanently activate one or more inactive processors or memory units.
• On/Off Capacity on Demand: Temporarily activate and deactivate processors and memory units to meet temporary workload peaks.
• Utility Capacity on Demand: Temporarily activates additional processor capacity automatically by the system if the processor utilisation of the "shared processor pool" exceeds 100%.

A HMC is required for On/Off Capacity on Demand and Utility Capacity on Demand. Capacity Upgrade on Demand can be achieved thorough ASMI although a HMC would make things a lot easier.,/p>

You need to contact an IBM Business Partner to discuss and arrange for any of these features and you should be aware that your configuration may mean some CoD options are not possible.

I'll be blogging specifically about my experiences with IBM's process for On/Off capacity on demand soon.

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