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

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• As a result of an iCAP system being out of compliance, one or both of the following actions
could occur:
– TiCAP balance will be debited for that system. Please refer to the section titled “TiCAP
debiting” for important details on TiCAP balance
– During the reboot of an nPar (in nPar mode only) on that system, the iCAP software may
enforce compliance by deactivating one or more cores on that partition so as to bring the
system closer to a state of compliance (a minimum of one core will remain active on a
partition). As a result of this, a subsequent reboot of the nPar into vPar mode may fail to
boot up (locking the vPar database) because the count of Intended Active cores is less than
the total assigned count for that vPar database. iCAP compliance enforcement (general
and temporary capacity) does not occur within a vPar.
• The following are two important points with respect to nPars on an iCAP system. Please note
that these operations will not cause iCAP compliance issues but are important while doing
nPar related operations on an iCAP system
– iCAP system which contains nPars that have not been ignited and booted with HP-UX.
All physically configured components in such an nPar are assumed to have reserved usage
rights (the creation of an nPar carries with it an implied intent to boot it). Such an inactive
nPar cannot cause temporary capacity consumption, but components in that nPar are
counted against the number of usage rights available for the system and could prevent
activations on other active partitions
– While creating a new nPar in an iCAP system there must be enough available usage rights
on that system to cover all cores in that nPar.
If there are insufficient number of available usage rights on the active HP-UX partitions (or
unassigned cells), the partition cannot be created
TiCAP Debiting
• In versions 8.02 and 8.03, the iCAP software was changed to allow debiting of the TiCAP
balance which may cause it to go negative even when IAC or TiCAP is not applied to the
system. Prior to this version the TiCAP balance would never go negative for a system unless
TiCAP or IAC was applied or if the iCAP system was a member of a GiCAP group.
• As a result of this change and also where GiCAP is in use, the iCAP software will debit TiCAP
balance if the number of Inactive Cores is fewer than the number of cores without usage
rights, i.e. if the iCAP system is out of compliance (as described in the previous section).
• The following actions could occur as a result of having a negative TiCAP balance:
– If there is a negative TiCAP balance but the number of Inactive cores is more than or equal
to the number of Cores without Usage rights, the complex remains in an exception state
without any enforcement action. However when additional temporary capacity is applied
to the system the required amount of temporary capacity will be deducted to clear out the
negative balance
– If there is a negative TiCAP balance and the system is out of compliance (i.e. the number of
Inactive cores is less than the number of Cores without Usage Rights) then boot time
compliance enforcement may happen as described in the previous section
• For more details on the impact of negative TiCAP balance refer to the iCAP User's Guide at
http://docs.hp.com/en/B9073-90183/B9073-90183.pdf. In particular, refer to Chapter 5:
"Temporary Instant Capacity" and "Shutting down a partition with instant capacity cores" in
the "Special Considerations" section.