HP-UX Virtual Partitions Ordering and Configuration Guide (September 2012)

Notes about Maximum Number of Virtual Partitions

• Table 13 assumes single path to I/O; if dual path is used, as in many mission critical

environments, then the recommended and maximum numbers may be half of that stated.

• The number of virtual partitions can be limited by the number of available IO slots.

• For PA-RISC systems, the number of virtual partitions can be limited by the size of the kernels.

In short, the sum of the kernel sizes must be less than 2GBs. For more information, see Memory

Allocation in the HP-UX Virtual Partitions Administrator Guide.

4.2.5 Minimum Virtual Partition Requirements

Each virtual partition requires a minimum of:

• 1 processing core

• Enough memory to run HP-UX 11i and applications. See the applicable HP-UX Install and

Update Guide for your OS for the minimum amount of memory.

• 1 unique boot device connected through SCSI or Fiber Channel card on a PCI bus or a Local

Bus Adapter (LBA) that is uniquely owned by that virtual partition)

• 1 unique LAN card on a PCI-bus/LBA that is uniquely owned by that virtual partition. On

Integrity systems, the LAN card must be bootable if you are installing the OE onto a virtual

partition using Ignite-UX. For more information on how vPars uses Ignite-UX, see the Chapter

4 of the HP-UX Virtual Partitions Administrator Guide.

Notes about Minimum Virtual Partition Requirements

• Each PCI bus/LBA is uniquely owned by 1 virtual partition. Therefore, the internal LAN card

and storage connections (associated with each core I/O card) can only be owned by a single

virtual partition. All other virtual partitions require a separate LAN card for network connection,

and external storage (and associated SCSI/FC connections to that storage for boot).

• An LBA is typically equivalent to one I/O slot.

• LBAs cannot be daisy chained.

• The LAN and boot device, unique to a virtual partition, can be combined into 1 LBA though

a supported combination card.

4.3 Support Strategy

For Superdome 2, the cards supported in nPars mode are also supported in vPars mode. For more

information about the supported card list on Superdome 2,

see http://www.hp.com/go/hpux-iocards-docs. If the corresponding card is supported, then it is

also supported in vPars mode.

4.4 Supported Cards

Boot Recommendations

After the boot of the initial virtual partition, it is recommended that the deployment tool Ignite-UX

be used to boot the other virtual partitions.

Boot Constraints

Beyond the recommendation above, tape, CD or DVD, and lan or bootp booting (except through

Ignite-UX) of virtual partitions within a vPars environment are not supported. For more information

on booting and boot devices, see the paper titled Booting, Installing, Recovery, and Sharing in a

vPars Environment from CD or DVDROM or TAPE or Network available on the BSC website at

http://www.hp.com/go/hpux-vpars-docs.

32 Supported Configurations