I would like to ask for best practices how to manage on demand base the number of cores in use of a Dell PowerEdge 1950 Gen II running Ubuntu 16.04 lts.
The PowerEdge 1950 has two quad core Intel Xeon X5363 processors, power on demand enabled in BIOS and fully supports IPMI.
Here under are the details and capabilities of the X5365
*-cpu:0 description: CPU product: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5365 @ 3.00GHz vendor: Intel Corp. physical id: 400 bus info: cpu@0 version: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5365 @ 3.00GHz slot: CPU1 size: 2GHz capacity: 3600MHz width: 64 bits clock: 1333MHz capabilities: x86-64 fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority dtherm cpufreq configuration: cores=4 enabledcores=4 threads=4 *-cpu:1 description: CPU product: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5365 @ 3.00GHz vendor: Intel Corp. physical id: 401 bus info: cpu@1 version: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5365 @ 3.00GHz slot: CPU2 size: 2GHz capacity: 3600MHz width: 64 bits clock: 1333MHz capabilities: x86-64 fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority dtherm cpufreq configuration: cores=4 enabledcores=4 threads=4
This is detailed info of the X5365 CPUs:
user@server:~$ sudo cpufreq-info cpufrequtils 008: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2009 Report errors and bugs to cpufreq@vger.kernel.org, please. analyzing CPU 0: driver: acpi-cpufreq CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0 maximum transition latency: 10.0 us. hardware limits: 2.00 GHz - 3.00 GHz available frequency steps: 3.00 GHz, 2.67 GHz, 2.33 GHz, 2.00 GHz available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance current policy: frequency should be within 2.00 GHz and 3.00 GHz. The governor "ondemand" may decide which speed to use within this range. current CPU frequency is 2.00 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). cpufreq stats: 3.00 GHz:44.02%, 2.67 GHz:0.32%, 2.33 GHz:0.34%, 2.00 GHz:55.33% (71) analyzing CPU 1: driver: acpi-cpufreq CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 1 CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 1 maximum transition latency: 10.0 us. hardware limits: 2.00 GHz - 3.00 GHz available frequency steps: 3.00 GHz, 2.67 GHz, 2.33 GHz, 2.00 GHz available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance current policy: frequency should be within 2.00 GHz and 3.00 GHz. The governor "ondemand" may decide which speed to use within this range. current CPU frequency is 3.00 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). cpufreq stats: 3.00 GHz:38.36%, 2.67 GHz:0.03%, 2.33 GHz:1.47%, 2.00 GHz:60.15% (92) analyzing CPU 2: driver: acpi-cpufreq CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 2 CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 2 maximum transition latency: 10.0 us. hardware limits: 2.00 GHz - 3.00 GHz available frequency steps: 3.00 GHz, 2.67 GHz, 2.33 GHz, 2.00 GHz available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance current policy: frequency should be within 2.00 GHz and 3.00 GHz. The governor "ondemand" may decide which speed to use within this range. current CPU frequency is 2.00 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). cpufreq stats: 3.00 GHz:46.97%, 2.67 GHz:1.24%, 2.33 GHz:1.75%, 2.00 GHz:50.04% (158) analyzing CPU 3: driver: acpi-cpufreq CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 3 CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 3 maximum transition latency: 10.0 us. hardware limits: 2.00 GHz - 3.00 GHz available frequency steps: 3.00 GHz, 2.67 GHz, 2.33 GHz, 2.00 GHz available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance current policy: frequency should be within 2.00 GHz and 3.00 GHz. The governor "ondemand" may decide which speed to use within this range. current CPU frequency is 2.00 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). cpufreq stats: 3.00 GHz:38.12%, 2.67 GHz:0.04%, 2.33 GHz:0.36%, 2.00 GHz:61.47% (67) analyzing CPU 4: driver: acpi-cpufreq CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 4 CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 4 maximum transition latency: 10.0 us. hardware limits: 2.00 GHz - 3.00 GHz available frequency steps: 3.00 GHz, 2.67 GHz, 2.33 GHz, 2.00 GHz available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance current policy: frequency should be within 2.00 GHz and 3.00 GHz. The governor "ondemand" may decide which speed to use within this range. current CPU frequency is 2.00 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). cpufreq stats: 3.00 GHz:47.15%, 2.67 GHz:2.25%, 2.33 GHz:0.44%, 2.00 GHz:50.16% (100) analyzing CPU 5: driver: acpi-cpufreq CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 5 CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 5 maximum transition latency: 10.0 us. hardware limits: 2.00 GHz - 3.00 GHz available frequency steps: 3.00 GHz, 2.67 GHz, 2.33 GHz, 2.00 GHz available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance current policy: frequency should be within 2.00 GHz and 3.00 GHz. The governor "ondemand" may decide which speed to use within this range. current CPU frequency is 2.00 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). cpufreq stats: 3.00 GHz:41.84%, 2.67 GHz:0.35%, 2.33 GHz:0.42%, 2.00 GHz:57.39% (68) analyzing CPU 6: driver: acpi-cpufreq CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 6 CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 6 maximum transition latency: 10.0 us. hardware limits: 2.00 GHz - 3.00 GHz available frequency steps: 3.00 GHz, 2.67 GHz, 2.33 GHz, 2.00 GHz available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance current policy: frequency should be within 2.00 GHz and 3.00 GHz. The governor "ondemand" may decide which speed to use within this range. current CPU frequency is 2.00 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). cpufreq stats: 3.00 GHz:52.61%, 2.67 GHz:0.47%, 2.33 GHz:3.11%, 2.00 GHz:43.81% (158) analyzing CPU 7: driver: acpi-cpufreq CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 7 CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 7 maximum transition latency: 10.0 us. hardware limits: 2.00 GHz - 3.00 GHz available frequency steps: 3.00 GHz, 2.67 GHz, 2.33 GHz, 2.00 GHz available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance current policy: frequency should be within 2.00 GHz and 3.00 GHz. The governor "ondemand" may decide which speed to use within this range. current CPU frequency is 2.00 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). cpufreq stats: 3.00 GHz:51.61%, 2.67 GHz:0.48%, 2.33 GHz:0.38%, 2.00 GHz:47.53% (103)
How can I reduce/increase the number of cores on a per demand base? Tried cpufrequtils but have not succeeded.