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

NOTE: When you create a partition, the vPars Monitor assumes you will boot and use the partition.
Therefore, even if a partition is down, the resources assigned to the partition cannot be used by
any other partition.
The next few sections will describe how we arrived at each portion of the partition plan.
Number of Virtual Partitions
For the latest information on the recommended and maximum number of virtual partitions per
system or nPartition, see the document HP-UX Virtual Partitions Ordering and Configuration Guide
available on the BSC website at:
www.hp.com/go/hpux-vpars-docs
Virtual Partition Names
All virtual partitions must be given text names that are used by the vPars commands. The names
can consists of only alphanumeric characters and periods (’.’). The maximum length of a name is
239 characters.
HP recommends using the corresponding hostnames for virtual partition names, but they are not
internally related.
For our cellular server, we have chosen the names of our virtual partitions to be keira1, keira2,
and keira3:
keira3keira2keira1Partition Name
For our non-cellular server, we have chosen the names of our virtual partitions to be winona1,
winona2, and winona3:
winona3winona2winona1Partition Name
Although the underscore (_) is a legal character within the name of a virtual partition, it is not a
legal character within the Domain Name System (DNS).
TIP: Virtual Partitions on nPartitions
If you are using vPars on a complex, you may want to distinguish the names of your virtual partitions
from the names of your nPartitions to avoid confusion.
Minimal Hardware Configuration
Every bootable virtual partition must have at least:
• 1 CPU
• system memory (sufficient for HP-UX and the applications in that partition)
• a boot disk (when using a mass storage unit, check your hardware manual to verify that it
can support a boot disk)
Although not required for booting a virtual partition, you can add LAN card(s) as required for
networking.
For your virtual partitions, use the number of CPUs, amount of memory, boot disk configuration,
and lan cards as is appropriate for your OS and applications.
CPUs
For detailed information on CPU allocation, read “CPU” (page 219).
Planning Your Virtual Partitions 51