HP-UX Workload Manager overview

Using HP-UX Workload Manager with HP Temporary

Instant Capacity and HP Pay per use

HP offers the Temporary Instant Capacity (TiCAP) and Pay per use (PPU) features. You can use WLM

to manage the use of TiCAP or PPU resources to ensure your workloads use only the amount of CPU

resources needed to meet their SLOs and that you pay only for the resources you actually use. WLM

can manage these resources in stand-alone (nonpartitioned) systems as well as across partitions.

TiCAP activates CPU capacity in a temporary “calling-card fashion” such as in 30-day increments

(where one day equals 24 hours for one core). You purchase a codeword to obtain rights to use

certain Instant Capacity cores for a preset number of days. This codeword is applied to a system so

that you can turn on and off any number of these cores as long as your prepaid amount of temporary

capacity days has not expired. WLM supports version 6 or later of TiCAP.

Using WLM on a system with the PPU software, CPU capacity is increased or decreased automatically

to support peak anticipated demand, basing payment for the HP server on actual metered or

monitored usage of that capacity. With PPU version 4, capacity can be increased or decreased by

whole cores as needed, with billing determined by the number of active cores. Beginning with PPU

version 5, all cores on a PPU system are active, and billing is based on your percentage of usage for

those cores. Beginning with PPU version 7, which includes version 5 capabilities, billing can also be

based on the number of active cores on the system, with WLM activating only those cores that are

needed. WLM integrates with PPU versions 4 and 7, or later.

To take advantage of this optimization provided by TiCAP or PPU, set your SLOs in the WLM

configuration file and then set up a WLM global arbiter configuration that specifies the utilitypri

keyword. (For information on using the utilitypri keyword, see the wlmparconf(4) and

wlmpard(1M) manpages.) WLM and the TiCAP or PPU software automatically adjusts the number of

active cores to the smallest number of cores needed to satisfy the SLOs. Using the utilitypri

keyword also ensures that WLM maintains compliance with your TiCAP usage rights: when your

prepaid amount of temporary capacity expires, WLM no longer attempts to use temporary resources.

(By default, when 15 or fewer days of temporary capacity are available, WLM stops using TiCAP. In

this case, you must purchase extra capacity. As of WLM A.03.02, you can change this 15-day

default by setting the WLM global arbiter utility_reserve_threshold keyword. For more

information, see the wlmparconf(4) and wlmpard(1M) manpages.)

Using HP-UX Workload Manager with HP Integrity Virtual

Machines

HP Integrity Virtual Machines is a robust soft partitioning and virtualization technology that provides

operating systems isolation, shared CPU resources (with subcore granularity), shared I/O, and

automatic dynamic resource allocation. It is available for HP-UX 11i v2 and later, running on HP

Integrity servers.

Given a system with Integrity VM installed, you can run WLM both on the Integrity VM host and in an

Integrity VM (guest), but each WLM runs as an independent instance. Note the following guidelines:

• On the system itself (on the Integrity VM host)—Use a strictly host-based WLM configuration (a

configuration designed exclusively for moving cores across partitions or for activating TiCAP or PPU

cores). WLM will not run with FSS groups or pSet-based groups on Integrity VM hosts where guests

are running.

• Inside any Integrity VM (guest)—Do not use Instant Capacity, PPU, or HP-UX Virtual Partitions (vPar)

integration. However, guests can take advantage of CPU resources added to the Integrity VM host