Using HP-UX Workload Manager: A quick reference

Executive summary

Traditional IT environments are often silos in which both technology and human resources are aligned

around an application or business function. Capacity is fixed, resources are over-provisioned to meet

peak demand, and systems are complex and difficult to change. Costs are based on owning and

operating the entire vertical infrastructure—even when it is being underutilized.

Resource optimization is one of the goals of the HP Adaptive Enterprise strategy—a strategy for

helping customers synchronize business and IT to adapt to and capitalize on change. To help you

realize the promise of becoming an Adaptive Enterprise, HP provides virtualization technologies that

pool and share resources to optimize utilization and meet demands automatically.

HP-UX Workload Manager (WLM) is a virtualization solution that helps you achieve a true Adaptive

Enterprise. As a goal-based policy engine in the HP Virtual Server Environment, WLM integrates

virtualization techniques—including partitioning, resource management, utility pricing resources, and

clustering—and links them to your service level objectives (SLOs) and business priorities. WLM

enables a virtual HP-UX server to grow and shrink automatically, based on the demands and SLOs for

each application it hosts. You can consolidate multiple applications onto a single server to receive

greater return on your IT investment while ensuring that end-users receive the service and performance

they expect.

WLM automates many of the features of the Process Resource Manager (PRM) and HP-UX Virtual

Partitions (vPars). WLM manages CPU resources within a single HP-UX instance as well as within and

across hard partitions and virtual partitions. It automatically adapts system or partition CPU resources

(cores) to the demands, SLOs, and priorities of the running applications. (A core is the actual data

processing engine within a processor, where a single processor can have multiple cores.) On systems

with HP Instant Capacity, WLM automatically moves cores among partitions based on the SLOs in the

partitions. Given the physical nature of hard partitions, the “movement” of cores among partitions is

achieved by deactivating a core on one nPartition and then activating a core on another.

This paper presents an overview of the techniques and tools available for using WLM A.03.02 and

WLM A.03.02.02. WLM A.03.02 is available with the following operating system and hardware

combinations:

Operating Systems Hardware

HP-UX 11i v1 (B.11.11) HP 9000 servers

HP-UX 11i v2 (B.11.23) HP Integrity servers and HP 9000 servers

HP-UX 11i v1 (B.11.11) and

HP-UX 11i v2 (B.11.23)

Servers combining HP 9000 partitions and HP

Integrity partitions (in such environments, HP-UX

11i v1 supports HP 9000 partitions only)

WLM A.03.02.02 is available with the following operating system and hardware combinations:

Operating Systems Hardware

HP-UX 11i v3 (B.11.31) HP 9000 servers and HP Integrity servers

(Some of the functionality presented in this paper was available starting with WLM A.02.00.)

This paper assumes you have a basic understanding of WLM terminology and concepts, as well as

WLM configuration file syntax. The paper first gives an overview of a WLM session. Then, it provides