Technical data

Introduction to nPartitions
nPartition Requirements and Recommendations
HP System Partitions Guide: Administration for nPartitions—rp7410
EMSP—[e-mail]
50
nPartition Requirements
and Recommendations
The hardware requirements shown below determine which cells are
eligible to be assigned to an nPartition.
Also consider the partition recommendations, which can improve an
nPartition’s performance and availability.
nPartition
Requirements
Every nPartition you configure must meet the following hardware
requirements.
• All cells in an nPartition must have the same processor revision level
and clock speed. That is, the IODC_HVERSION must be identical for
all processors.
• The same firmware revision must be present on all cells within an
nPartition.
• At least one cell in every partition must be connected to an I/O
chassis that has core I/O.
Only one core I/O is active per partition. If a partition has multiple
cells that are connected to I/O chassis with core I/O, only the core I/O
connected to the active core cell is active.
nPartition
Recommendations
You also should, as possible, configure nPartitions to meet the following
configurations for better performance and availability.
• Each nPartition’s size should be a power of two: 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 cells.
This provides the best memory interleaving and performance
characteristics.
You can configure partitions of any size, but those whose size is a
power of two have best memory performance.
• The I/O chassis containing the active core I/O also should have an
HP-UX boot disk and method of installing or recovering HP-UX (such
as a CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive, network connection to an install
server, or tape drive).
This allows the partition to boot or recover HP-UX, even if only the
partition’s core cell is functioning.
HP Restricted / DRAFT
DRAFT NOV 2001