HP Instant Capacity User's Guide for Version 9.x

7.1 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 and OpenVMS
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
When you retrieve the codeword, you must provide the sales order number for the codeword
purchase, the serial number of the Group Manager system, and partition information for the
Group Manager. Applying this codeword on a system running Instant Capacity enables the
creation of a GiCAP group with members.
Figure 7-1illustrates the process of configuring and using Global Instant Capacity.
100 Global Instant Capacity