v3) Considerations in vPars

1. Abstract

This white paper is intended for individuals who are interested in consolidating virtual partitions

(vPars) running different HP-UX versions onto a single hard partition. This document describes the

supported configurations and guidelines for operating mixed HP-UX versions environment and

describes some tools available to aid in configuring and managing the virtual partitions. It also

highlights the subtleties and possible pitfalls and recommendations for the setup and operation of this

environment.

This paper assumes that the reader has a good knowledge of the HP-UX operating system and is

familiar with the concepts of vPars. The reader is encouraged to refer to the Architectural

Considerations when Mixing Virtual Partitions and Operating System Versions white paper to obtain

an understanding of the benefits of mixing different HP-UX versions in a single virtual partitions

environment.

2. HP-UX Virtual Partitions Overview

vPars allows the system administrator to create independent HP-UX operating environments from

hardware resources in a system or hard partition. Each of the HP-UX operating environments can be

tuned specifically for the applications that will be hosted.

A virtual partition is composed of one or more CPUs, memory, and I/O devices for mass storage and

networking. The minimum amount of memory necessary to boot a virtual partition is based on the

minimum required by the operating system version and is also a function of the number and type of

I/O resources it owns. Please refer to the corresponding HP-UX Release Notes for detailed restrictions.

All the resources of each virtual partition are specified in a partition plan called the vPars database

that resides on the boot disk of each virtual partition. The vPar commands vparcreate and vparmodify

are used to create, add, delete, and modify resource assignments in the partition plan. Each virtual

partition should be configured with enough I/O and memory to sustain the peak workload that will be

placed on it. The CPUs on the other hand can be configured to handle steady state and peak

workload conditions by using the CPU migration facilities of vPars. Starting with HP-UX 11i v3,

memory can also be dynamically configured using the online memory migration feature of vPars.

Please refer to the Configuring and Migrating Memory on vPars white paper for details on the

memory migration feature.

The vPars product has three separate release streams for the three different HP-UX releases supported:

vPars A.03.xx is supported on HP-UX 11i v1 (11.11), A.04.xx is supported on HP-UX 11i v2 (11.23),

and A.05.xx is supported on HP-UX 11i v3 (11.31). Note that each vPars release stream will not

install on any HP-UX release other than its supported HP-UX release.

3. Mixed HP-UX 11i v1/v2/v3 vPars Environment

Overview

The vPars product now supports mixing different HP-UX releases with in the same hard partition. The

benefits of supporting the mixed HP-UX 11i v1/v2/v3 vPars environment are manifold, allowing users

to deploy business critical applications and test applications in the same hard partition. This section

lists the various supported combinations of HP-UX releases in the same hard partition.

Mixed HP-UX 11i v1/v2/v3 vPars