HP-UX Virtual Partitions Administrator Guide (includes A.05.09) (5900-2188, March 2012)

Deconfiguration of a socket means that the EMS issues a firmware call, marking the socket for
deconfiguration on the next system boot. On the next system boot, none of the cores in the target
socket are visible to either the OS in standalone mode or the OS instances of the virtual partitions.
The deconfiguration is persistent across system boots.
Note the following two items:
• A deactivation of a CPU does not mean a deconfiguration of its socket. The CPU Monitor is
able to determine whether the CPU needs to be deactivated or whether it needs to take further
action and deconfigure the socket.
• A reboot of a virtual partition is not the same as a reboot of the system (the entire box or
nPartition).
The exceptions to the deactivation of CPUs are the boot processor of each OS instance (the boot
processor has a logical instance of zero) and the last CPU in a cell or nPartition. The exception to
the deconfiguration of sockets is that the last remaining socket will not be deconfigured (otherwise,
the system could not boot).
If any spare iCAP (formerly known as iCOD) or PPU CPUs are available, the necessary number of
CPUs will be activated to replace the CPUs deactivated.
NOTE: On a vPars system, when a virtual partition goes down and contains a deconfigured or
deactivated CPU, the Monitor will try to decommission the CPU from use and replace it with another
good CPU if possible. If this is not possible, the vPars Monitor will not allow the partition to boot
until the deconfigured or deactivated CPU can be taken out of use. Following are some cases
where the vPars Monitor may not allow the virtual partition to boot:
• There is a deconfigured or deactivated CPU which has been reserved for the partition as part
of the total (cpu::num) request and vPars Monitor does not have any free CPUs with which
to replace it. To correct this, you can delete CPUs from other partitions or from this partition.
• There is a deconfigured or deactivated CPU that has been bound to the partition by hardware
path (cpu:hw_path) which the vPars Monitor is not able to replace with another available
CPU. To correct this, you can remove the CPU specified by hardware path using -d
cpu:hw_path to allow the deconfigured or deactivated CPU to be decommissioned and
replaced with another (working) CPU.
• There is a deconfigured CPU which has been reserved for the partition as part of a CLP request
(cell:cell_ID:cpu::num) and there are no free CLPs in that cell. To correct this, you can make
available CPUs from that cell by deleting the CPUs that are part of this cell from other partitions
or delete the CPUs from the cell in this partition.
Dual-core processors have two CPUs (that is, cores) per processor. Deactivation happens on a
CPU level, but deconfiguration happens at the socket level. If a processor’s socket is deconfigured,
both CPUs sharing the socket will be unavailable.
(Integrity only) If a CPU is marked for deconfiguration using an EFI command and the nPartition
is not rebooted (for example, the vPars Monitor is immediately booted), the vPars Monitor will not
know or indicate (including with vparstatus) that the CPU has been marked for deconfiguration
and will use the CPU like any other working CPU.
224 CPU, Memory, and I/O Resources (A.04.xx)