Maintaining iCAP Compliance on HP Integrity & HP 9000 Mid-range & Superdome Servers

Audience

This document impacts any customer who has iCAP.

Purpose

This purpose of this document is to:

1. Explain iCAP boot time compliance enforcement with respect to iCAP cores

2. Highlight a change in temporary capacity debiting that was made in the iCAP software (version

8.02 and later) and has been present in GiCAP since its inception

3. Document best practices for:

• Ensuring an iCAP system is in compliance

• Managing TiCAP balance

• Creating nPars on an iCAP system

This document describes the design of the iCAP software in relation to boot time compliance, TiCAP

debiting and nPar creation. The following sections describe the working of the iCAP software with

respect to those issues and best practices to be followed to avoid unanticipated outcomes like cores

being deactivated at boot time and decrementing TiCAP balance.

Overview

Please see the definitions of terms at the end of the document.

iCAP Boot Time Compliance Enforcement with Respect to iCAP Cores

• An iCAP system can be out of compliance when the total number of Inactive cores is fewer

than the number of Cores without Usage Rights for that system (this can be verified from the

"Instant Capacity Resource Summary" section of the icapstatus output or the Exception status

returned by the same output). This could happen under conditions such as:

– When a partition is at an EFI boot prompt on an Integrity server or BCH prompt on an HP

9000 server or at “vpmon” prompt (with no vPars booted) for both Integrity and HP 9000

servers

– Shutdown (without using the -R -H option with the shutdown command) of a partition

– icapd or cimserver daemons not running or responding correctly (for example, due to

file system full condition under /var) on a partition

– System experiences a hardware failure of the cell which has Inactive iCAP cores. A failed

cell may not correctly report how many cores are present and as a result of this the iCAP

software has to estimate the number of Inactive cores. Depending on the platform the

minimum supported number of cores may be assumed inactive. If the cell actually had a

larger number than the assumed inactive, the system could be reported out of compliance

or temporary capacity may be debited

– Removing hardware on a system with iCAP cores. If a cell is removed from a complex and

that leaves insufficient Inactive cores the system will be out of compliance and could

consume temporary capacity

– No HP-UX or OpenVMS installed in a partition where the number of Intended Active cores

is less than the total number of cores in that partition