PRM Product Overview

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What is HP Process Resource Manager?
HP PRM is a resource management tool that enables you to control the allocation of CPU, private and
shared real memory, and disk bandwidth resources to multiple workloads or users within an HP-UX
instance. This capability enables you to stack multiple applications within a single HP-UX instance and
ensure that the critical applications and users get system resources in a timely manner.
PRM is policy-based; it manages resources based on policies you define. These policies govern
resource consumption by users, applications, and UNIX groups. You can define multiple policies to
manage resources. For example, you might have one policy during the day and another one at night.
You can specify resource policies to PRM through a text configuration file or an easy-to-use GUI.
Benefits
PRM works within a single HP-UX instance to provide many benefits. With PRM, you can:
• Ensure that critical users or applications have sufficient CPU, memory, and disk I/O bandwidth
resources, allowing multiple applications to share an HP-UX instance
• Restrict the CPU, memory, and disk I/O bandwidth resources available to users or applications that
might otherwise consume more than their fair shares of resources
• Allocate resources based on budgeting
• Ensure that an application package in an HP Serviceguard cluster has sufficient resources on an
active standby system in the event of a failover
• Consolidate multiple instances of an application, such as Oracle®, onto a single HP-UX instance,
saving the effort of tuning numerous systems in the exact same manner for the application
Features
The benefits noted in the previous section are the results of various PRM features, with which PRM:
• Enables you to define policies to manage the allocation of the most critical shared resources: CPU,
private and shared real memory (including isolation of a pSet’s memory), and disk bandwidth
• Supports resource allocation policies for both users and applications, which makes PRM valuable
for interactive and application systems
• Supports resource allocation policies for UNIX groups
• Supports multiple mission-critical applications on a single image of HP-UX by ensuring application
isolation and policy-based resource allocation
• Requires no modifications for applications to operate under PRM control (Any application can work
with PRM.)
• Enables you to modify the PRM configuration dynamically at any time, even while the system is
under load (PRM and all applications continue to run on the system when the resource policy is
modified—there is no downtime. This functionality allows the resource allocation policy to be
changed as needed by business goals that vary based on the time or date. Policy changes can be
automated so that no operator or administrator action is required.)
• Is aware of users defined in netgroups (defined in the file /etc/netgroup), which saves time during
configuration and is invaluable in networked computing environments
• Supports allocation of resources among up to 256 PRM groups (partitions of the HP-UX instance)
• Supports allocation of resources in a hierarchical manner, where a PRM group’s resources are
divided among its subgroups