HP vPars and Integrity Virtual Machines V6.1 Administrator Guide

• VM-guest-storage-specification defines where and what storage is seen in the virtual
machine. This is formatted as:
device:adapter-type:hardware-address:
You can specify one of the following devices:
◦ disk
◦ dvd
◦ tape
◦ changer
◦ burner
◦ hba
• adapter-type is avio_stor on an HP-UX guest.
• hardware-address or pcibus, pcislot,aviotgt (optional) specifies the virtual device PCI
bus number, PCI slot number, and AVIO target number. If you do not specify this information,
it is generated automatically. HP recommends that you allow the hardware address to be
generated automatically. To omit the hardware address, use the following format (including
two colons):
device:adapter-type::VM-Host-storage-specification
• VM-Host-storage-specification defines where and how the virtual machine storage
is supplied on the VSP. Specify it using the following format:
storage:location
Where storage is one of the following:
◦ disk
◦ lv
◦ file
◦ null
◦ attach
And location is a VSP system file.
For complete information about constructing storage specifications for virtual machines, see
Section 9.2.2.1 (page 122).
The type of VSP backing store can affect the performance of the virtual machine. Use the ioscan
command to obtain information about the current device configuration on the VSP system, and try
to distribute the workload of the virtual machines across the physical backing stores.
When you share a physical backing storage device among virtual machines. potential conflicts
are not always obvious. For example, if you use a file in a file system on /dev/disk/disk1 as
a backing store, the raw device (/dev/rdisk/disk1) cannot also be used as a backing store.
For more information about specifying virtual devices, see Chapter 9 (page 107).
Integrity VM checks the current physical configuration when you create a virtual machine using
the hpvmcreate command. If the virtual machine uses backing stores that are not available, the
virtual machine is created, and warning messages provide details. If you use the hpvmstart
command to start a virtual machine that requires physical resources that are not available on the
VSP system, the virtual machine is not allowed to start, and error messages provide detailed
information about the problem.
After you create a virtual machine, you can use the hpvmmodify command to add, remove, or
modify storage devices for the virtual machine. To add a device to an existing virtual machine,
include the -a option, the same way you would on an hpvmcreate command. For example,
82 Creating virtual machines