HP-UX Virtual Partitions 6.0 Administrator Guide

Table 1 New vPar management commands in HP-UX Virtual Partitions v6.0
DescriptionCommand
A command that provides connection to the virtual console of a specified virtual partition. Each
virtual partition has its own virtual console from which you can manage the virtual partition
operating environment.
vparconsole
A command that helps manage the virtual partition resource pool, that is, the pool of CPU resources
dedicated for use by the vPars.
vparhwmgmt
A command that creates and controls the virtual network switch (vswitch) for a virtual partition. A
virtual partition accesses its network through a vNIC connected to a port provided by the vswitch.
The virtual network switch is connected in turn to a single pNIC on the VSP.
vparnet
With the introduction of VSP, a number of commands used with earlier versions of vPars are not
required. The commands that are no longer available are vparadmin, vpardbprofile,
vparconfig, vpardump, vparefiutil, vparenv, vparextract, vparreloc, vparutil,
and vecheck.
User interface – enhanced control via GUI
While earlier versions of vPars provided status/view-only support in a GUI, in HP-UX Virtual
Partitions v6.0 you can configure, modify, and view status of virtual partitions using the GUI. You
can access the vPars v6.0 GUI (Integrity Virtual Server Manager) from the HP System Management
Homepage (HP SMH) of the VSP.
vPar virtual console – access via VSP
In vPars v6.0, each vPar has a dedicated console. You can access the console of any virtual
partition from the VSP or from a Virtual iLO Remote Console, via telnet or secure shell. To access
the Virtual iLO Remote Console of a specific vPar, it must be configured with an IP address, a
network mask, and have authorized users (see the -K and -L options of vparcreate and
vparmodify).
NOTE: If remote consoles are set up, it is necessary to have a valid user account on the VSP
(even if those accounts have restricted shells) to be able to access the remote console.
The remote console is always hosted by the VSP's main internet connection, not by the NIC/subnet
assigned to the vPars. This means, the remote console is always on the VSP's subnet.
EFI – access via console
In vPars v6.0, you can access the EFI of any virtual partition from its own console. You can modify
the EFI environment of a virtual partition from within the EFI shell.
CPU and memory – locality aware assignment
In vPars v6.0, the VSP utilizes locality information from the physical server to assign the best
available CPUs and memory to a virtual partition. The CPUs assigned to a virtual partition are
dedicated to that partition, and not sharable with other virtual partitions. The direct access and
locality aware assignment ensures that maximum performance is maintained.
A single virtual partition can be as large as the entire system (CPU, memory, and I/O) minus the
resources reserved for the VSP. The smallest virtual partition that can be created would be a partition
that has a single physical processor core.
I/O – shared
vPars v6.0 provides an efficient shared I/O infrastructure that allows the bandwidth of HBAs and
NICs to be shared amongst a set of vPars to increase the utilization of the HBA or NIC. This
How does vPars v6.0 differ from its earlier versions 7