Practices for maintaining compliance with iCAP on Superdome 2

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Practices for maintaining compliance with

iCAP on Superdome 2

Technical white paper

Table of contents

Audience ............................................................................................................................................ 2

Purpose .............................................................................................................................................. 2

Special note: ................................................................................................................................... 2

Overview ............................................................................................................................................ 2

General iCAP rules .......................................................................................................................... 2

Best practices followed to facilitate iCAP compliance .............................................................................. 3

Managing alternate configuration definitions and OS image changes........................................................ 4

Details and example scenarios .............................................................................................................. 5

Example 1: Compliant system with two booted nPars ........................................................................... 5

Example 2: Partition at EFI boot causing a compliance issue ................................................................. 6

Example 3: Compliance with iCAP memory ........................................................................................ 7

Maintaining iCAP Inventory on the HP Utility Pricing Solutions Portal .......................................................... 8

Definitions of terms used in this document ............................................................................................. 16

Environment .................................................................................................................................. 16

Core without Usage Rights .............................................................................................................. 16

Core with Permanent Usage Rights ................................................................................................... 16

Active core .................................................................................................................................... 16

Inactive core .................................................................................................................................. 16

Intended active cores ...................................................................................................................... 16

TiCAP balance ............................................................................................................................... 17

Summary of content (17 pages)

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Practices for maintaining compliance with iCAP on Superdome 2 Technical white paper Table of contents Audience ............................................................................................................................................ 2 Purpose .............................................................................................................................................. 2 Special note: ...........................................................................................
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Audience This document targets customers who have Instant Capacity (iCAP) in their HP Integrity Superdome 2 systems. Purpose To document best practices for managing the iCAP environment to: • Maintain the iCAP inventory • Manage Temporary Instant Capacity (TiCAP) • Enable compliance with iCAP systems Following best practices helps in not only maintaining compliance with the iCAP contract but also facilitates smooth upgrades of HP Integrity Superdome 2 servers to future releases.
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Best practices followed to facilitate iCAP compliance 1. For the greatest flexibility in dynamic movement of usage rights assign all physical cores to partitions where they are mostly likely to be needed. 2. Upon partition resizing, if the total number of physical cores is less than the number of intended active cores, we recommend that the partition be adjusted to have the right number of intended active cores after a reboot. 3. Run “icapd” daemon on all nPars and vPars in an iCAP system. 4.
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Managing alternate configuration definitions and OS image changes HP Integrity Superdome 2 servers support alternate configuration definitions for partitions called “parspecs.” When multiple partition configurations are maintained for various partitions within a complex or if operating system (OS) re-install or OS image restore from backup is performed the following rules mentioned need to be followed to maintain compliance with the iCAP Terms and Conditions: 1.
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Details and example scenarios If a system is out of compliance, as described in the section “General iCAP rules,” then you have to take necessary steps to bring the system back to compliance with the iCAP Terms and Conditions. The following examples illustrate the activities that you can follow to achieve compliance. Example 1: Compliant system with two booted nPars Consider a complex with two nPars; nPar 1 and nPar 2. In this example, we assume that one active and one iCAP blade are purchased.
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Example 2: Partition at EFI boot causing a compliance issue Now consider the case where nPar 2 is at EFI boot prompt. Let us assume that you move two of the Usage Rights available in nPar 2 to vPar in nPar 1 using the iCAP commands provided. There would be no reboot of the system as there is no change in the partition sizes in this scenario. Therefore, that system is out of compliance as shown in figure 2.
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Example 3: Compliance with iCAP memory Now consider the case where a new iCAP blade with iCAP memory has been added to the complex that already contains one iCAP and one active blade each. Suppose you assign this new blade to a new partition nPar 3 and you do not power off the blade; then all the iCAP memory on this iCAP blade is available to the system. This puts the system out of compliance as shown in figure 3.
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Maintaining iCAP Inventory on the HP Utility Pricing Solutions Portal The portal is located at www.hp.com/go/icap/portal. It is used both to provide codewords for systems that shipped prior to Superdome 2 as well as provide similar inventory management functions for Superdome 2 servers. In the future, it will also be used to provide codewords for Superdome 2 servers. The portal uses the codeword nomenclature for both functions.
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If you have previously registered through HP Passport you will be brought to the portal home page. If not, you will need to register and will then be brought to the home page. The HP Utility Pricing Solutions home page is shown here.
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When you receive a Superdome 2 server with iCAP hardware, the hardware has already been registered for you and you can review what is available on the HP Utility Pricing Solutions Portal. The “Get iCAP order details” link on the HP Utility Pricing Solutions Portal provides a list of active and iCAP components for a specific purchase order or system serial number.
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Note: The following shows where to find the HP sales order number.
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Rights to Use (RTUs), Instant Access Capacity (IAC), TiCAP, GiCAP, and any add-on, either iCAP HW or Active HW requires inventory management. As seen in the following figure, the “Create codewords” link provides a choice of the type of inventory management needed―TiCAP/IAC, RTU, GiCAP, iCAP/active add-on hardware.
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Clicking on “Create iCAP codeword” will start the iCAP codeword wizard. In the first screen as shown in the figure here, enter the system information including the system product and serial number and the “icapstatus –s” output of the system for which you are updating inventory.
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The system inventory as is available on the portal is displayed along with the option to update any of the iCAP inventories that you may have purchased. You must select which iCAP component needs to be updated. In the next window you will be prompted to enter the details of the inventory that needs to be updated on the portal. Supply the relevant information for completing the process of inventory management on the HP Utility Pricing Solutions Portal.
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The following figure shows an example of TiCAP being updated on the portal with the relevant system serial number: After clicking “Next” the portal confirms the change of TiCAP inventory and gives you the option of having a mail sent with the inventory change details which you can store for future reference.
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Definitions of terms used in this document Environment A complex, if GiCAP has not been purchased or all of the complexes in a GiCAP group. Core without Usage Rights HP Integrity Superdome 2 servers contain blades that are available with both sockets fully populated. An iCAP blade contains two inactive quad-core processors or eight inactive cores. Such cores purchased under the iCAP program are initially defined to be Cores without Usage Rights. We also call these iCAP cores.
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TiCAP balance The amount of unused TiCAP time on a partition. iCAP cores can be activated as long as the TiCAP balance amounts to at least 30 minutes per core requested. For example, 1 core can be activated if TiCAP Balance is at least 30 minutes, 2 cores can be activated if TiCAP Balance is at least 60 minutes and so on. Once the TiCAP balance is consumed, you are obligated to either apply more TiCAP to the partition or shut the cores without Usage Rights.