HP-UX Virtual Partitions Administrator Guide (includes A.05.08) (5900-1312, March 2011)

• vMedia Support
vPars A.05.03 and HP-UX support read-only use of optical media via an iLO 2 MP on HP
Integrity servers based on the sx2000 chipset, including rx7640, rx8640, and HP Integrity
Superdome servers.
◦ vPars A.05.03 supports all the standard iLO 2 MP features that are supported by HP-UX,
including the Lights Out Advanced features of vMedia. However, vPars does not support
virtual keyboard, video, and mouse features.
◦ Only one virtual partition at a time can use the Lights Out Advanced features of vMedia.
To move the vMedia attachment to a different virtual partition, the path associated with
the vMedia card must be reassigned to the other virtual partition.
To launch Ignite-UX via a vMedia DVD drive in vPars mode:
1. Set up a vMedia DVD drive using the Lights Out Advanced vMedia feature.
2. Insert an HP-UX OE DVD (such as the Virtual Server OE and Data Center OE) into the
vMedia DVD drive.
3. Assign the path associated with the vMedia card to the target virtual partition.
4. From the vPars Monitor prompt, issue the following vparload command to launch
Ignite-UX from the HP-UX OE DVD in the vMedia drive:
vparload -p targetVpar -D fsIndex
• vPars A.04.05 or later on HP Integrity Platforms with SAS Disks
vPars A.04.05 with patch PHSS_37829, and vPars A.04.06, on HP Integrity platforms supports
the use of SAS disks.
NOTE: In certain situations when using vPars with SAS disks on HP Integrity platforms, the
vparstatus -v and setboot commands may show different boot disk paths in vPars
mode. This is normal, and is due to the disks being scanned in a different sequence at boot
time.
You may see different boot disk paths for SAS disks reported by the vparstatus -v and
setboot commands in vPars mode after booting into nPars mode and then booting back
into vPars mode. For example:
◦ A virtual partition is ignited from a SAS disk and booted in vPars mode, and the
vparstatus -v command shows the boot disk path as A.
◦ If the system is booted back to nPars mode, the boot path may change to B, which is
different from A due to a different scan order. This would also change the boot path to
B in the vPars database (/stand/vpdb).
◦ After booting back to vPars mode, vparstatus -v for this virtual partition shows B as
the boot path and setboot still shows A.
Both boot paths (A and B) refer to the same SAS disk path.
• vPars and Dynamic nPartition Operations
Dynamic nPartitions operations cannot be performed to an nPartition that is running Virtual
Partitions. For more information on dynamic nPartitions, see the HP-UX 11i v3 Dynamic
nPartitions whitepaper on the BSC website at: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/
support/SupportManual/c01893748/c01893748.pdf.
• Support for vPars Configuration Based on Locally Optimized Reference Architecture (LORA)
on Multi-Cell Integrity Systems
LORA is a framework for increasing system performance by exploiting the locality domains
in HP servers with Non-Uniform Memory Architecture (NUMA). LORA consists of configuration
HP Product Interaction 25