HP vPars and Integrity Virtual Machines V6.1 Administrator Guide

• HP-UX 11i V3 Virtual Server Operating Environment (VSE-OE)
• Software installation tools (Ignite-UX and Software Distributor-UX)
• System performance monitoring tools (GlancePlus, Measureware, OpenView Operations
Agent)
Applications do not have to be changed to run on a vPar/VM OS. Operating system patches and
hardware restrictions apply to vPars.
Do not run the following types of applications on a vPar/VM:
• Virtualization platform (HP-UX vPars and/or Integrity VM software)
• Utility pricing tools (run on the VSP)
• Capacity planning tools (run on the VSP)
• Applications that require direct access to physical hardware (for example, disaster-tolerant
solutions)
You must purchase licenses for any software you run on a virtual machine or a vPar, including the
HP-UX operating system and any HP or third-party layered software. You can purchase the licenses
for HP software under the HP Virtualization Licensing program. For more information, contact your
HP Support representative.
Always read the product release notes before installing any software product so that you have the
latest information about changes and additions to the documentation. The following chapters
describe how to install the vPars and Integrity VM software and how to create vPars and VMs to
run on the VSP system.
1.9 Do not install applications on the VSP system
When you install HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM, HP-UX kernel parameters are changed to
accommodate the virtual environments. This makes the system unsuitable for running any other
applications. Regardless of whether guests are configured and running, the VSP system is not
configured to allow applications to share system resources. You can run system management utilities
and Serviceguard, as documented in the HP Serviceguard Toolkit for Integrity Virtual Servers User
Guide at HP Serviceguard Toolkit for Integrity Virtual Servers.
• Using backup solutions for VSP and virtual environment backups
Backup solutions such as HP Data Protector or Veritas NetBackup can be used on both the
VSP system and the vPar/VM systems. Consult the support matrix of such products for supported
versions. Install the backup (client) agents on the VSP and the vPar/VMs. HP highly recommends
that the /var and /opt directories, in addition to the standard locations, be backed up regularly
on the VSP system. Do not use the VSP system as a backup server. For more information, see
the HP-UX 11i v3 Installation and Update Guide.
• Using HP GlancePlus/iX to monitor virtual environments
You can use Glance on the VSP to monitor vPar/VM data, but recorded measurements can
be misleading. Glance receives the CPU accounting information from the vPar/VM kernel.
Because the VSP can take the vPar/VM processor away (for example, when a hardware
interrupt occurs), the time spent running other vPar/VMs is reported for the state that the
vPar/VM was in at the time the CPU was taken away. For more information about using
Glance, see glance(1M).
Glance 4.6 or later is supported running in a VSP or in a vPar/VM; however, certain
measurements might not apply in a particular context or report limited results. For example,
measuring CPU utilization on the VSP reports all the time spent running in vPar/VMs as "system
time"; to receive "user time" or "nice time" for a given vPar/VM, you must run Glance in that
vPar/VM. Similarly, memory-related faults, or system calls for a vPar/VM, are not visible from
Glance running in the VSP, from Glance running in that vPar/VM. Glance also offers a number
1.9 Do not install applications on the VSP system 21