Specifications

Hard partitions
Hard partitions (nPars) are electrically isolated hard partitions with security provided in the hardware.
Facilitated by the MP and secure firmware, you can configure the sx2000 fabric to isolate resources
in an nPar from the rest of the system, which creates a hardware firewall to prevent other operating
system instances from disrupting that partition. The firewall also reduces the chance that a single
failure (in hardware or software) can take down multiple partitions. This feature is required to perform
hardware maintenance on one partition while the other partitions continue to operate.
The size of nPar partitions can range from a single cell board to the entire system. nPars are available
in every HP 9000 rp7440 and rp8440 Server with no additional purchase or licensing requirements.
vPars
The other partitioning strategy, vPars, runs within a hard partition as shown in Figure 19. Available
on HP-UX 11i, vPars offer partitioning granularity down to the processor core level and the
performance necessary for key applications because there is minimal overhead to coordinate among
the guest operating environments. vPars also provide software fault isolation and security with the
ability to dynamically move processor cores from one vPar to another within the same physical server
or nPar, enabling you to dynamically allocate processing cores to and from the partition, scaling it
with your usage.
Figure 19. The HP Partitioning Continuum for the HP 9000 rp7440 and rp8440 Servers
Node
Isolation Flexibilit
y
nPar 2
• OS image with HW fault
isolation
• Dedicated CPU,
RAM & I/O
nPar 1
• OS image with
HW fault isolation
• Dedicated CPU,
RAM & I/O
nPar 3
nPar n
• OS image with
HW fault isolation
• Dedicated CPU
RAM & I/O
Application 2
• Guaranteed compute
resources (shares or
percentages)
Application 1
• Guaranteed compute resources
(shares or percentages)
Application 3
Application n
• Guaranteed compute
resources
(shares or
percentages)
v
Par 2
• OS + SW fault isolation
• Dedicated CPU
,
RAM
Hard Partition
Hard Partition
vPar 2
•
OS + SW fault isolation
• Dedicated CPU, I/O & Memory
vPar 1
• OS + SW fault isolation
• Dedicated CPU, I/O &Memory
v
Par 1
• OS + SW fault isolation
• Dedicated CPU
,
RAM
Single Physical
Node Single OS image per
node within a cluster
nPartitions
Hard partitions
within a node
Virtual Partitions running on Hard
partitions within a node
Application stacking allowing for
higher utilization of resources
HP Essentials Global Workload Manager
HP Essentials Global Workload Manager (gWLM) is the intelligent policy engine for the multisystem
HP VSE. HP gWLM improves the utilization of resources in a multiserver, heterogeneous rp7440,
rp8440, and other HP Integrity and HP 9000 servers using HP-UX 11i, OpenVMS, and Linux
platforms. HP gWLM flexes hard partitions by activating and deactivating temporary instant capacity
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