z/VM 6.2 - beyond SSI and LGR

The main features in z/VM 6.2 are certainly Single System Image (SSI) and Live Guest Relocation (LGR). With that it's now possible to have up to four z/VMs in one cluster and move the Linux guests from one to the other. So finally a z/VM update will no longer require a Linux outage. IBM generated lot's of technical and marketing material about this. 

However there are performance enhancements in z/VM 6.2 as well that will help running Linux guests that should not be neglected. See the links below for more details:

• many memory management improvements, that are all transparent to the Linux guests. So install them and if you've been running in memory over committed scenarios with Linux, you'll get the performance benefit.
• additional performance enhancements, some of which have been also available as APARs on older z/VM releases.

So it's definitely worthwhile to update older versions to z/VM 6.2 just because of those enhancements. On top there are also several really useful technology exploitations available.