PRM Product Overview

to the assigned PRM groups. The database processes are then allocated resources based on their

configured allocations. You can also use Extended Regular Expressions to match entire command

lines.

You can assign each instance of the same application to separate PRM groups and consequently

separate system resources. This feature is applicable to any process that renames its processes, which

facilitates consolidating multiple instances or copies of an application onto a single server.

The PRM commands prmrun and prmmove can also be used to ensure each instance of an

application belongs to the desired PRM group.

Adapting to changing needs

PRM was designed with the operations of the data center in mind. HP realizes that a system, be it a

stand-alone server, an nPartition, a virtual partition, or a virtual machine (provided by HP Integrity

Virtual Machines), is not doing the same tasks 24 hours per day. As an example, many systems run

batch workloads during the day and often have a backup window at night. You might want to have

different resource policies in effect at these times. For example, during the day, backup processes

should not get any CPU time. At night, however, backup processes can consume up to 50% of the

CPU resources.

The HP PRM dynamic configuration change features enable you to create multiple configurations that

represent resource policies for different times. Using cron jobs, PRM can be instructed to change the

resource policy for each period.

Assigning resources hierarchically

You can nest PRM groups inside one another, forming a hierarchy of groups similar to a directory

structure, which enables you to divide groups into subgroups. A group’s resources are divided among

its subgroups. If a group has no subgroups, it uses the allocation itself.

For example, assume the Sales group has five CPU shares and the Finance group has five CPU

shares. Consequently, both groups have 50% of the system’s CPU resources. The Sales group is then

subdivided into an Analysis group, with three shares, and a Forecasting group, with two shares.

These subgroups share the 50% that the Sales group is allocated. The Analysis group gets 3/5 of the

50%, or 30% of the total CPU resources. The Forecasting group gets 2/5 of the 50%, or 20%.