HP-UX 11i September 2001 Release Notes

Chapter 2

2 Hard Partition Systems

Introduction (new at 11i original release)

Hewlett-Packard’s new hard partition servers provide highly conﬁgurable,

high-performance HP-UX system environments.

At the September 2001 release, HP supports hard partitions on the following servers:

• HP Superdome 16-way (model 9000/800/SD16000)

• HP Superdome 32-way (model 9000/800/SD32000)

• HP Superdome 64-way (model 9000/800/SD64000)

• HP rp8400 server (model 9000/800/S16K-A)

The ability to create hard partitions allows you to conﬁgure a single hard partition

server as either one large system or as multiple smaller systems. Because hard

partitions are managed through software, you can reconﬁgure a server without

physically modifying the server’s hardware conﬁguration.

As a result, a hard partition server can run multiple instances of the 11i operating

system on a single server. This capability is accomplished by deﬁning multiple partitions

within a hard partition server.

Each partition deﬁnition establishes a subset of a server’s hardware resources that are

to be used as a system environment for booting a single instance of HP-UX.

All processors, memory, and I/O in a partition are available exclusively to the software

running in the partition. Thus, each partition runs a single instance of the Boot Console

Handler (BCH) interface and HP-UX.

You can reconﬁgure partitions to include more, fewer, and/or different hardware

resources, but this will require shutting down the operating system running in the

partition and resetting the partition as part of reconﬁguring it.

For more speciﬁc task-oriented information on the hard partition servers, refer to

Managing Superdome Complexes: A Guide for HP-UX System Administrators, part

number B2355-90702 and HP Systems Partitions Guide, part number B2355-90736.