Here are the various Free Memory Sizes per Memory Pool AIX.  This list has been calculated in Excel and has not yet been verified by testing each of the settings with minfree and maxfree, although I would like to do this one day if time permits.

Note that the default settings produce very small Free Memory Lists that can be consumed very quickly.  The defaults for minfree is 960 and maxfree is 1088 (AIX 6.1 onwards), resulting in a Free Memory List size that is small.

Free Memory shortage can be seen with 'vmstat -s' - You are looking for Free Frame Waits.

For the number of memory pools, use 'vmstat -v'.

Free Memory is needed for everything that AIX does, tune it accordingly for your workload.  Note the size of the Free Memory List is per Memory Pool, you are not likely to ever need minfree/maxfree greater than 20480, higher figures are shown as examples of how much memory could be kept on the free list with larger values.

 

Multiplier    Setting          Bytes          KB          MB       2x      4x        6x       8x

of 2048                     4K Pages    Per Pool    Per Pool    Pools   Pools     Pools    Pools

                960        3,932,160       3,840        3.75      7.5      15       22.5     30

               1088        4,456,448       4,352        4.25      8.5      17       25.5     34

2              4096       16,777,216      16,384       16        32        64       96      128

3              6144       25,165,824      24,576       24        48        96      144      192

4              8192       33,554,432      32,768       32        64       128      192      256

5             10240       41,943,040      40,960       40        80       160      240      320

6             12288       50,331,648      49,152       48        96       192      288      384

7             14336       58,720,256      57,344       56       112       224      336      448

8             16384       67,108,864      65,536       64       128       256      384      512

9             18432       75,497,472      73,728       72       144       288      432      576 

10            20480       83,886,080      81,920       80       160       320      480      640

12            24576      100,663,296      98,304       96       192       384      576      768

16            32768      134,217,728     131,072      128       256       512      768    1,024

32            65536      268,435,456     262,144      256       512     1,024    1,536    2,048

48          98304      402,653,184     393,216.00     384       768     1,536    2,304    3,072