HP Integrity Virtual Machines Manager Version 4.0 Getting Started Guide

1 Introduction to HP Integrity Virtual Machines and HP
Integrity Virtual Machines Manager
This chapter provides an overview of HP Integrity Virtual Machines (Integrity VM) and of HP
Integrity Virtual Machines Manager (VM Manager), its associated management product. It also
lists the basic management tasks you can perform using VM Manager. This chapter includes the
following sections:
• “HP Integrity Virtual Machines” (page 13)
• “HP Integrity Virtual Machines Manager” (page 13)
• “VM Manager Tasks” (page 16)
HP Integrity Virtual Machines
HP Integrity Virtual Machines (Integrity VM) is a soft partitioning and virtualization technology
that enables you to create multiple software-controlled Itanium®-based virtual machines within
a single HP Integrity server or nPartition. The Integrity server or nPartition acts as a VM Host
for the virtual machines (virtual machines are also called guests). The VM Host is a platform
manager. It manages hardware resources such as memory, CPU allocation, and I/O devices, and
shares them among multiple virtual machines. The VM Host runs a version of the HP-UX
operating system and can be managed using standard HP-UX management tools.
The virtual machines share a single set of physical hardware resources, yet each virtual machine
is a complete environment in itself and runs its own instance of an operating system (called a
guest OS). As with a real machine, the virtual machine contains:
• At least one processor core, also referred to as a virtual CPU or vCPU
• Memory
• Disks
• Networking cards
• A keyboard
• A console
• Other components of a computer
All these elements are virtual, meaning that they are at least partially emulated in software rather
than fully implemented in hardware; however, to the guest OS they appear as if they are real,
physical components.
No guest OS can access memory allocated to another guest OS. One virtual machine is not affected
by software events on another virtual machine, such as faults or planned software downtimes.
Integrity VM optimizes the utilization of hardware resources, quickly allocating resources such
as processor cores, memory, or I/O bandwidth to the virtual machines as needed. Any software
that runs on supported versions of HP-UX can run in an Integrity VM virtual machine. No
recompiling, recertification, or changes are required for applications to run in a guest OS.
Applications run in the guest OS as they do on any operating system.
HP Integrity Virtual Machines Manager
HP Integrity Virtual Machines Manager (VM Manager) is the GUI that you can use from your
browser to manage Integrity VM resources. VM Manager allows you to create, configure, and
evaluate virtual machines, and to monitor and evaluate data and resources at the level of the
VM Host. You can view all of a VM Host's virtual machines and their assigned resources, and
you can view all resources assigned to a specific virtual machine or virtual switch. For example,
VM Manager provides graphical views of virtual-to-physical network and storage devices so
that you can view I/O data, including resource utilization information. VM Manager obtains
HP Integrity Virtual Machines 13