HP Instant Capacity Version 10.x User Guide (5900-2170, January 2012)

7 GiCAP
This chapter covers the following topics:
• “GiCAP overview” (page 71)
• “GiCAP requirements” (page 72)
• “GiCAP Group Managers” (page 73)
• “GiCAP grouping rules” (page 74)
• “GiCAP sharing rights” (page 74)
• “Creating GiCAP groups” (page 75)
• “GiCAP resource sharing” (page 77)
• “GiCAP and temporary capacity” (page 80)
• “Removing a GiCAP group member” (page 81)
• “Reinstalling a group member” (page 81)
• “Group Manager availability (no standby manager)” (page 82)
• “Group Manager failover considerations” (page 82)
• “Upgrades and GiCAP” (page 83)
• “Rights seizure” (page 83)
• “Considerations for Multiple Groups” (page 87)
• “Additional considerations” (page 88)
GiCAP overview
GiCAP provides you with the flexibility to move usage rights for iCAP 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.
GiCAP 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.
GiCAP is part of iCAP 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
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
GiCAP overview 71