Introducing HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions

Sep 2007 5
Why use HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions?
Most data centers have server hardware that is underutilized. These same data centers almost
never have enough servers to satisfy their customers. These seemingly contradictory situations
have led administrators to the obvious conclusion for years – “I should be able to make better use of
the resources I already have.”
HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions is a powerful, flexible tool that aids in co-existence of multiple
workloads – each with their unique OS configuration requirements – on the same server at the
same time. With vPars, customers can carve their hard partitions (nPartitions) or servers into
multiple virtual servers at a finer granularity than hard partitions.
Often customers combine the availability of HP’s hard partitions (nPartitions), with its electrical
isolation, with the increased flexibility and granularity of resources provided by HP soft partitions
(HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions) to make an even more powerful partitioning solution.
Dynamic resource migration (CPU and memory) capabilities of virtual partitions make it ideal for
customers with varying workloads and limited hardware resources. Idle resources in one vPar can
be migrated to other loaded vPars for efficient utilization. Workload management tools available in
HP-UX make use of this capability to perform automatic load balancing across vPars.
vPars enables:
Ø Practical consolidation on enterprise-class servers
Ø Increased utilization and scalability
Ø More flexibility and capacity
Ø Rapid deployment of new environments
Ø Improved system availability
Ø Improved performance configuration and productivity
Ø Negligible performance overhead
Practical consolidation on enterprise-class servers
There are pros and cons of consolidation in the data center. Approaches to server consolidation
are varied and can be achieved at many levels:
• Application
• Middleware
• Operating System
• Hardware
Consolidation at any of these levels implies some form of consolidation at lower levels. An example
of consolidating at the middleware level is reducing the number of Oracle database instances. It is
difficult to combine these instances unless they reside on the same OS instance. The Oracle
instances are no longer running on separate OS instances nor do they reside on separate physical
servers. Therefore, hardware and OS consolidation has already taken place either explicitly or
implicitly.
With consolidation, as with almost any endeavor, 20 percent of the effort gives 80 percent of the
benefit. In comparison to other consolidation approaches, consolidating at the hardware level is
analogous to 20 percent of the effort. Hardware consolidation with HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions
enables you to realize most of the consolidation benefit.
Consolidating at other levels requires additional effort for diminishing returns. Application
consolidation can be time-consuming and expensive. For example, moving all users to a single
mail application, can take months, depending on the organization. It can also have a high level of