HP Instant Capacity user's guide for Version 10.x (March 2011)

7 Global Instant Capacity
This chapter covers the following topics:
• “Global Instant Capacity Overview” (page 77)
• “Global Instant Capacity Requirements” (page 78)
• “Global Instant Capacity Group Managers” (page 79)
• “Global Instant Capacity Grouping Rules” (page 80)
• “Global Instant Capacity Sharing Rights” (page 80)
• “Creating Global Instant Capacity Groups” (page 81)
• “Global Instant Capacity Resource Sharing” (page 83)
• “Global Instant Capacity and Temporary Capacity” (page 86)
• “Removing a Global Instant Capacity Group Member” (page 87)
• “Reinstalling a Group Member” (page 88)
• “Group Manager Availability (No Standby Manager)” (page 88)
• “Group Manager Failover Considerations” (page 88)
• “Upgrades and Global Instant Capacity” (page 89)
• “Rights Seizure” (page 89)
• “Considerations for Multiple Groups” (page 93)
• “Additional Considerations” (page 94)
Global Instant Capacity Overview
Global Instant Capacity, or GiCAP, provides you with the flexibility to move usage rights for Instant
Capacity components within a group of servers. It also provides “pooled” temporary capacity
across the group. This has several potential benefits: cost-effective high availability, more adaptable
load balancing, and more efficient and easier use of temporary capacity. A GiCAP Group is
managed using the icapmanage command.
Global Instant Capacity provides several benefits:
• Cost-effective high availability. In case of planned or unplanned down time, you can transfer
usage rights from a failed partition or a failed member complex to one or more other servers
in the group that are providing backup availability. Without GiCAP, the only way to provide
this failover scenario is to provision each server with an adequate amount of temporary
capacity.
• Load balancing. To provide adaptability and to accommodate changing demands, usage
rights can be transferred between servers in a group. For example, a server with extra, unused
capacity can release usage rights to activate additional components on an overloaded server
that needs extra capacity.
• Pooled temporary capacity. Temporary capacity usage rights can be shared across servers
for better efficiency and ease of use. By pooling temporary capacity, there is less need to
provision temporary capacity for each server.
Global Instant Capacity is part of Instant Capacity version 8.x and later on HP-UX systems, and is
enabled by purchasing a special GiCAP sharing rights codeword. After purchase, the codeword
can be retrieved from the HP Utility Pricing Solutions web portal:
http://www.hp.com/go/icap/portal
Global Instant Capacity Overview 77