System Sizing Guidelines for Integrity Virtual Machines Deployment -- Hardware Consolidation with Integrity Virtual Machines
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Introduction
Integrity servers help to meet your business needs by allowing you to consolidate multiple
applications onto a single server using a combination of HP-UX 11i Partitioning Continuum and
Virtual Server Environment (VSE) technologies. The partitioning techniques, which you can use
alone or in combination, include hard partitions, virtual partitions, virtual machines, and resource
partitions.
Hard partitions (nPartitions) offer electrical isolation and cell board granularity, allowing you
to service one partition while others are online. Integrity VM supports multiple operating systems,
including HP-UX, Windows Server®, and Linux®.
Virtual partitions (vPars) are separate operating system instances on the same nPartition or
server, with O/S, application, and resource isolation. HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions enable you to
dynamically reallocate CPU resources between vPars as workload requirements change. Virtual
Partitions also offer single CPU core granularity.
Virtual machines have their own separate operating system instances (guests), on the same
nPartition or server, with different OS versions, applications, and users, in a fully isolated
environment. HP Integrity Virtual Machines software provides shared CPU (with sub-CPU
granularity), shared I/O, as well as dynamic CPU and memory resource allocation based on
demand and entitlement.
Resource partitions allocate resources to specific applications and users within an operating
system. They offer fully dynamic allocation of resources, including CPU or sub-CPU and percent
memory granularity.
Successful IT consolidation efforts regularly use HP partitioning to isolate production environments
from test and development environments. HP partitioning and VSE can:
Improve your RoIT through optimized server utilization with minimal overhead.
Increase server flexibility through easy resizing of partitions.
Reduce risks by offering a variety of isolation choices, including hard partitions, virtual partitions,
virtual machines, and resource partitions.
Improve service levels, such as application response time, through the intelligent policy engine
(HP-UX Global Workload Manager), which provides automatic provisioning of resources based
on predefined service level objectives.
Using Integrity Virtual Machines for Hardware
Consolidation
Virtual machines share hardware while providing complete operating system instance isolation, so
the Integrity Virtual Machines (Integrity VM) product is the perfect solution for hardware
consolidation. Using virtualization, you can lower overall hardware costs by:
Reducing the complexity and number of hardware components required to run multiple operating
system (OS) instances.
Increasing overall hardware utilization.