AIX has been installed on an LPAR with 32 GB of memory. What should be checked first, before increasing the paging space beyond the default 512MB?

The LPAR maximum memory attribute defines the ceiling for physical RAM allocation, which is independent of virtual memory and paging space sizing.

Filesystem quantity and size are unrelated to paging space requirements, as the virtual memory subsystem and filesystems are separate concerns.

Disk distribution and utilization are performance placement considerations that are secondary to first establishing whether additional paging space is actually needed.

Paging space should be sized based on the real memory demands of the applications being hosted - if workloads do not exceed physical RAM, expanding paging space wastes disk and adds unnecessary I/O overhead. Assessing application paging requirements is the logical first step to determine whether any increase is warranted at all.