Managing Systems and Workgroups: A Guide for HP-UX System Administrators

Systems and Workgroups

Types of System

Chapter 1 47

Partitioned Systems (The Partitioning Continuum)

HP-UX 11i provides many ways to isolate or combine system resources

(for example CPUs, memory, and I/O cards). HP refers to the collection of

system administration solutions that provides these capabilities as the

Partitioning Continuum.

In addition to the traditional operating mode of one HP-UX operating

system per computer, multiple instances of HP-UX can run on a single

computer (using partitioning), and multiple computers can be combined

to host a single instance of HP-UX (using clustering). Depending on the

versions of HP-UX you are using and the hardware you are running

them on, you can use any of the following technologies (or combinations

of them) to maximize the efﬁciency and ﬂexibility of your HP-UX-based

equipment:

iCOD Instant Capacity on Demand allows you to have

processors (CPUs) in your system that you have not yet

purchased. These processors sit idle until you activate

them using special iCOD commands. For more

information on iCOD, go to the “On Demand Solutions

(ODS)” section of http://docs.hp.com/hpux/netsys.

nPartitions Some PA-RISC and Itanium-based Enterprise Server

systems (for example, Superdomes) have processors,

memory, and I/O interface connections mounted on cell

boards. These systems usually contain multiple cell

boards.

NOTE I/O cards plug into I/O chassis. The chassis are

connected to (associated with) the cell boards by cables

or other internal connections.

Cell boards can be grouped in speciﬁc ways such that

the resources of each group are electrically isolated

from the resources of other groups in the system. These

groups, called partitions (sometimes referred to as hard

partitions, or physical partitions), separate the

resources of the computer into self-contained units,

protected from each other in such a way that hardware

or software crashes in one partition are unable to affect

the operations of neighboring partitions. Each partition