HP Instant Capacity for HP Integrity & HP 9000 Mid-range & Superdome Servers

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Sharing usage rights
Usage rights can be shared among servers using HP Global Instant Capacity (GiCAP). GiCAP
operation is built on the concept of a collection of HP Integrity and HP 9000 servers, called a GiCAP
group, within which users can share usage rights for iCAP processors, cell boards with memory, and
Temporary Instant Capacity for iCAP processor cores. GiCAP is part of iCAP 8 software and is
installed, but not enabled, on every HP-UX system with iCAP 8. All partitions in all members of a
GiCAP group must be running iCAP 8 software.
Creating an HP Global Instant Capacity group
The systems that can be grouped together are specified in the GiCAP Grouping Rules. In addition,
each GiCAP group must have a group manager. Any HP-UX system running iCAP 8 can be used as
the GiCAP Group Manager. It need not be an iCAP or even an iCAP-supported system. The only
restriction is that it cannot be a virtual machine. The Group Manager maintains information about the
groups and the resources they can share and moves the usage rights among members of the group.
When the members and Group Manager of a group have been determined, customers can:
1. Purchase the appropriate quantity of GiCAP Sharing Rights and support based on the total
quantity of unactivated iCAP cores in the group.
2. Obtain the GiCAP codeword from the Utility Pricing Portal and apply it to the GiCAP Group
Manager
3. Create a group by defining the group name.
4. Add servers to the group within the restriction of the grouping rules and the quantity of sharing
rights. Additional servers (as specified by the GiCAP Grouping Rules) can be added to the group
as long as the total number of iCAP processors does not exceed the number of GiCAP Sharing
Rights.
Transferring usage rights between members of a GiCAP group
The transfer of usage rights between members of a group is easily accomplished by:
1. Determining the amount of usage to move and the source and destination quantity of processors or
cell boards or memory that must be activated
2. Deactivating the components on the one system using any capacity altering commands (partition
modification or iCAP modification commands)
3. Activating components on the target system using the same commands with appropriate options
Sharing HP Temporary Instant Capacity
To share HP Temporary Instant Capacity (TiCAP) among servers in a GiCAP group, purchase the
appropriate quantity of TiCAP (available in blocks of 30 core processing days). When you activate a
component and authorize the use of TiCAP, the local balance will be used first, followed by any
TiCAP that exists on other systems in the group.