HP vPars and Integrity Virtual Machines V6.1 Administrator Guide

The VSP virtualizes physical processors, memory, and I/O devices, allowing you to allocate them
as virtual resources to each virtual machine.
Virtual machines are abstractions of real, physical machines. The guest operating system runs on
the virtual machine just as it would run on a physical Integrity server, with no special modification.
In addition to the vPars and Integrity VM V6.1 bundle, BB068AA, the VirtualBase bundle is included
with the HP-UX 11i v3 March 2012 release and installed by default from the OE's. The VirtualBase
bundle which contains additional functionality such as the vPars/VM AVIO network and storage
drivers. The VirtualBase also provides a small guest software package that aids in local management
of the guest's virtual machine.
Figure 2 Hardware Consolidation Using Integrity VM
Guests are fully loaded, operational systems, complete with operating system, applications, system
management utilities, and networks, all running in the virtual machine environment that you set up
for them. You boot and manage guests using the same storage media and procedures that you
would if the guest operating system were running on its own dedicated physical hardware platform.
Even the system administration privileges can be allocated to specific virtual machine administrators.
One way to benefit from Integrity VM is to run multiple virtual machines on the same physical
machine. There is no set limit to the number of virtual machines that can be configured, but no
more than 256 virtual machines can be booted simultaneously on a single VSP. Each virtual machine
is isolated from the others. The VSP administrator allocates virtual resources to the guest. The guest
accesses the number of CPUs that the VSP administrator allocates to it. CPU use is governed by
an entitlement system that you can adjust to maximize CPU use and improve performance. A
symmetric multiprocessing system can run on the virtual machine if the VSP system has CPUs for
it.
Figure 2 illustrates how two HP-UX systems can be consolidated on a single Integrity server. The
HP-UX boot disk is consolidated onto the same storage device as the VSP boot disk.
Because multiple virtual machines share the same physical resources, I/O devices can be allocated
to multiple guests, maximizing use of the I/O devices and reducing the maintenance costs of the
data center. By consolidating systems onto one platform, your data center requires less hardware
and management resources.
Another use for virtual machines is to duplicate operating environments easily, maintaining isolation
on each virtual machine while managing them from a single, central console. Integrity VM allows
you to create and clone virtual machines with a simple command interface. You can modify existing
guests and arrange networks that provide communication through the VSP's network interface or
the guest local network (localnet). Because all the guests share the same physical resources, you
1.4 About Integrity VM 15