HP-UX Virtual Partitions 6.0 Administrator Guide

2 How vPars v6.0 and its components work
The virtual partition management architecture in vPars v6.0 is designed to provide a common
manageability framework for both virtual partitions and virtual machines. This architecture builds
upon the vPars strengths of scalability and dedicated cores and memory resources, and gains
benefits of HP virtual machines manageability.
The main components that make the vPars v6.0 work in a converged infrastructure include the
physical server, CLI and GUI at the management layer, dedicated cores (CPUs) and memory,
shared I/O and shared networking. This section briefly describes the various components.
Figure 2 (page 9) shows a diagram of the vPars v6.0 architecture.
Figure 2 vPars v6.0 architecture
Server
The vPars v6.0 product must be installed on the VSP, which is an instance of HP-UX on the server.
Both the physical server and the individual vPars require HP-UX 11i v3 September 2011 (AR1109)
or later version.
Management and shared I/O layer
This component provides a single point of management and control for the server and vPars. It
requires resources for the VSP, which includes one CPU core, mass storage and networking for
management and for shared I/O. The minimum memory required is the same as required by the
supported HP-UX 11i v3 version (currently this is HP-UX 11i v3 September 2011 (AR1109) or later
version). The common management component provides the following:
• Diagnostics and error recovery for the physical server and the vPars.
• Virtualization for limited resources. For example, console, shared I/O, and shared DVD.
On an n-core system, up to (n–1) one-core vPars are possible. For example, on a BL870c i2 blade
system, it is possible to have 15 one-core vPars.
Management layer CLI
In vPars v6.0, the commands are accessible from the VSP. In the new architecture, a few new
commands are introduced in addition to the vPars commands that are already available. Some of
the old vPars commands are no longer required in the new design.
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