Introduction to HP-UX Virtual Partitions v6 on HP Integrity blades

5
HP-UX vPars v6 resources
CPU and memory
In HP-UX vPars v6, the VSP utilizes locality information from the server to automatically assign the best available
physical CPU cores and memory to a virtual partition. The CPU cores and memory assigned to a virtual partition are
dedicated to that partition, and not sharable. The direct access and locality-aware assignment ensure that maximum
performance is maintained for applications running in that vPar.
A single virtual partition can be as large as the entire server (cores, memory, and I/O) minus the resources reserved
for the VSP. The smallest virtual partition that can be created would be a partition that has a single physical processor
core and the minimal amount of memory required to bring up HP-UX.
I/O
HP-UX vPars v6 provides an efficient, shared I/O infrastructure that allows the bandwidth of Host Based
Adaptors (HBAs) and Network Interfaces Cards (NICs) to be shared among a set of vPars. This increases the
utilization and flexibility of the HBA or NIC, preserves performance, and solves the I/O slot limitation issues
prevalent in earlier versions of HP-UX vPars. Virtual partitions are assigned virtual NICs that connect to a physical
NIC (or an aggregation of physical NICs) through a virtual switch.
In HP-UX vPars v6, the granularity of I/O assignment is flexible and allows multiple vPars to share the bandwidth of a
physical connection. In earlier versions of vPars, I/O assignment is at the slot granularity, and all physical
connections of a multi-function I/O card are owned by a single vPar.
Virtual iLO Remote Console
Each virtual partition provides an HP standard Integrated Lights-out (iLO) with its own unique IP address that can be
securely accessed from the VSP or over the Internet to control all operations of the vPar, including the access to a fully
featured Extensible Firmware Infrastructure (EFI) shell. Specific vPars administrators or group of users can be defined
and dedicated to manage a single or a group of virtual partitions. This feature guarantees the isolation between vPars
from a management prospective.
Managing HP-UX vPars v6
The definitions of the vPars characteristics are stored in the VSP, and changes to the vPars configuration are made
using a special set of commands that can be issued only from the VSP or from the Virtualization Server Manager
running in the System Management Homepage of the VSP. Registered vPar administrators can take control of virtual
partitions from the VSP or over the internet, increasing security and isolation between vPars.
HP-UX vPars v6 commands
HP-UX vPar v6 commands are available only from the VSP. A summary is as follows:
vparcreate—Create a virtual partition.
vparmodify—Rename a virtual partition or modify the resources of a virtual partition.
vparstatus—Display information about one or more virtual partitions.
vparremove—Remove a virtual partition.
vparboot—Boot a virtual partition.
vparreset—Reset a virtual partition.
vparconsole—Connect to the iLO and the console of a virtual partition.
vparnet—Create and control a vPars virtual network switch.
vparhwmgmt—Manage the virtual partition resource pool dedicated for use by virtual partitions.