Extracting Resource Allocation Data for Chargeback in a HP Virtual Server Environment for HP Integrity Servers

Physical Server TiCAP
If a complex server configuration uses TiCAP as well as iCAP, additional cores without usage rights in
a server can be activated and deactivated using separately purchased temporary capacity. TiCAP
activations of cores represent a change in the pool of resources a workload is drawing on and,
therefore, might be important to computing the relative utilization of a workload. In addition, because
temporary capacity is a purchased separately from the server, IT organizations might want to
specifically track its use in a chargeback implementation.
Using TiCAP and iCAP can simplify data gathering for chargeback purposes because both tools is
that are supported only on cell-based, complex physical servers. Therefore, these parameters need to
be determined only for that type of physical server.
The output of the icapstatus command has many parameters that govern the use of TiCAP in a
complex. Unfortunately, even if the tool reports that no cores are currently using TiCAP and that the
balance of TiCAP processing pool is zero, TiCAP processing might still have been used in the
previous period of interest for reporting resource allocation.
CLI: contents of /var/adm/icap.log on nPars and vPars
One way to determine whether TiCAP was used over a historical period is to examine the TiCAP
software logs on the partitions of the complex. Note that you must examine each log on all nPars or
vPars. The log file resides in the following location:
COMPLEX PARTITION # ll /var/adm/icap.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 444385 Oct 2 14:00
/var/adm/icap.log
COMPLEX PARTITION #
This file includes entries of the following format for every 30 minutes of TiCAP processing that occurs.
For example:
…
Date: 10/02/07 02:30:04
Log Type: Temporary capacity
debit
Temporary Capacity minutes debited: 30
Number of cores with usage rights: 4
Number of active cores: 5
nPar Active
ID cores
0 4
1 1
Temporary capacity available: 101 days, 18 hours,
30 minutes
…
The existence of at least one of these records in the reporting period indicates that TiCAP processing
was consumed. The following is a simple filter to obtain the date of every debit of capacity:
COMPLEX PARTITION # cat icapdebits.sh
cat /var/adm/icap.log | \
awk -v RS="" '{printf "%s %s %s %s %s\n",$2,$3,$6,$7,$8}' | \
grep "Temporary capacity debit"
COMPLEX PARTITION #
56