Introducing HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions

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Sep 2007

A white paper from HP

Introduction...................................................................................................................................3

What are HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions? .............................................................................................4

Why use HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions?..............................................................................................5

Practical consolidation on enterprise-class servers ..........................................................................5

Increased utilization and scalability................................................................................................6

More flexibility and capacity .........................................................................................................7

Rapid deployment of new environments.........................................................................................7

Improved system availability.........................................................................................................7

Improved performance configuration and productivity.......................................................................8

Negligible performance overhead..................................................................................................8

HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions features.................................................................................................8

HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions operational overview ...............................................................................9

Managing vPars...........................................................................................................................11

HP-UX Administration ...............................................................................................................11

vPars Administration.................................................................................................................11

Flexible vPars Administration ...................................................................................................11

vPars Components.......................................................................................................................11

vPars Monitor ..........................................................................................................................11

vPars Database (vpdb)..............................................................................................................12

vPars Commands.....................................................................................................................12

vPars Kernel Component...........................................................................................................12

vPars Resources .........................................................................................................................13

vPars and CPUs.......................................................................................................................13

vPars and Memory ...................................................................................................................13

vPars and I/O...........................................................................................................................13

vPars and Console ...................................................................................................................13

Compatibility with HP Virtual Server Environment and HP OpenView...................................................14

VSE Partitioning.......................................................................................................................14

VSE Availability........................................................................................................................14

VSE Utility Pricing ....................................................................................................................14

VSE Intelligent Control ..............................................................................................................14

HP OpenView Management Software..........................................................................................15

Availability ..................................................................................................................................15

Summary of content (15 pages)

PAGE 1
Introducing HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions A white paper from HP Introduction................................................................................................................................... 3 What are HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions? ............................................................................................. 4 Why use HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions? ..............................................................................................
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Limitations and Constraints ........................................................................................................... 15 For more information ....................................................................................................................
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Introduction Today’s data centers frequently need to be flexible in meeting the demands of new customers and new projects. Ideally, these demands have to be met in an expedited fashion with minimal overhead while providing a relatively high level of isolation from other customers and other projects. For most data centers, the best solution is one that uses current capacity to satisfy these new demands, while continuing to provide existing customers with the capacity they expect.
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What are HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions? For effective partitioning, it is necessary to isolate operating environments such that customer’s applications can coexist in the same server or cluster, while assuring complete privacy. In addition, it is often necessary to dynamically create, modify or even delete the isolated operating environments on a running server without interrupting non-related partitions.
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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.
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impact on productivity and morale if not done with much careful planning and support. Similarly, consolidating middleware instances requires a high level of expertise in the middleware, an understanding of how it is being used by the various business applications, and what performance impacts may result from the consolidation. Mutually exclusive OS or middleware version requirements (or both) frequently block consolidation of OS instances. Within a single OS instance, software may be incompatible.
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More flexibility and capacity HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions enables greater flexibility in configuring servers. Consider again businesses having applications that are cyclic in nature such as, payroll, end of month billing etc. Many times, the cycles for the applications are not aligned. Normally, servers need to be configured to handle peak loads which can lead to poor utilization. With vPars, applications can manage the peak loads effectively, i.e.
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Serviceguard can be used with vPars to further improve application availability. Improved performance configuration and productivity Performance and application-specific tuning is important when deploying and managing separate OS instances. With HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions, each vPar can be tuned independent of the other vPars. Hence, based on the application you want to run on a vPar, the OS can be tuned to get optimal performance for the application.
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HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions operational overview To understand how vPars works at a high level, it is best to compare it to a generic HP-UX server. Figure 4 shows a 4-way HP-UX server. Without vPars, the entire server would run a single instance of HP-UX. All of the resources (CPU, memory and disk) would be dedicated to the applications running in this single instance. The software stack for this server would look like the one in Figure 5.
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vPar1 – “Bill” Processor 0 Processor 1 Host PCI Bridge 4 SCSI 0/0 vPar2 – “Dave” LAN 1/0 Processor 2 Main Memory Main Memory Base Length 0x01000000, 128MB 0x40000000, 1GB Host PCI Bridge 5 Base Length 0x08000000, 896MB SCSI 0/0 Console 2/0 Disk 6.0 Processor 3 LAN 1/0 Disk 6.
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Managing vPars HP-UX Administration Each virtual partition functions like a standalone server and thus is administered by the root user like any other HP-UX server. Once a vPar is booted, all the HP-UX administration activities can be performed by the root user just the same way it is done on an nPar. All applications run on a vPar just the same way they run on an nPar. vPars Administration vPars administration, typically involves the following tasks • • • • • • • • Create a new virtual partition.
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invoked. In fact, the monitor is invoked only when HP-UX makes calls to firmware, or when the OS is shutting down, or when vPars management commands are executed. On Integrity based systems, the underlying firmware is virtual partition aware and a significant portion of the monitor functionality is performed in firmware. vPars Database (vpdb) At the heart of the monitor is the partition database, which tracks the resources that are associated with each vPar.
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vPars Resources A typical multi-vPar configuration is created by allocating the available hardware resources on a hard partition or server to individual vPars. CPU, memory and I/O resources in a server or hard partition are divided among the multiple vPars. vPars and CPUs Each vPar can be assigned CPUs at the CPU-core granularity. The minimum required for a vPar is a single CPU-core.
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among several vPars, a system administrator with access to the system console may cycle through console sessions of any of those vPars using a keystroke (Ctrl-A) at the console. Compatibility with HP Virtual Server Environment and HP OpenView HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions are an important component of the HP Virtual Server Environment for HP-UX 11i.
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The HP Virtual Server Environment for HP-UX 11i, of which vPars is a key part, creates a flexible environment that can double server resource utilization, maintain continuous service levels, and provide a mechanism to pay only for the resources that are used. In short, it creates a more agile and lower cost environment. HP OpenView Management Software HP OpenView tools such as GlancePlus can monitor or manage individual HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions.