Introducing HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions

Sep 2007 4

What are HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions?

For effective partitioning, it is necessary to isolate operating environments such that customer’s

applications can coexist in the same server or cluster, while assuring complete privacy. In addition,

it is often necessary to dynamically create, modify or even delete the isolated operating

environments on a running server without interrupting non-related partitions. To meet this need, HP

has developed HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions (vPars) - a unique technology that provides multiple

isolated operating system instances on the same server.

The virtual partitions can be dynamically created using software commands. Each partition runs its

own image of the HP-UX 11i operating system and can host its own applications in a fully software

isolated environment. Each virtual partition can be further subdivided into resource partitions, if

required. Solutions such as Process Resource Manager (PRM) and Workload Management tools

(WLM/gWLM) can be used with vPars for effective load management.

Figure 2 is an example of a single rp7410 server running four vPars.

Figure 2: Virtual Partitions within a Single rp7410 Server

11i

Dept. A

App 1

Dept. A

App 1’

Dept. B

App 2

Dept. B

App 3