HP-UX Virtual Partitions Administrator Guide (includes A.05.07) (5900-1229, September 2010)

Figure 2-4 Software Stack for Server with Two Virtual Partitions

HP-UX 11i

Patch Level B

Virtual Partition Monitor

Hardware / Firmware

Application 1

Application 2

vPars Monitor and Database

vPars Monitor

For each hard partition, the vPars Monitor manages the assignment of hardware resources to

virtual partitions, boots virtual partitions and their kernels, and emulates certain firmware calls.

By emulating these specific calls, vPars creates the illusion to each HP-UX instance that it is

running on a standalone server, consisting of the hardware that has been assigned to it.

Once a virtual partition is launched, the vPars Monitor transfers ownership of the hardware to

the virtual partition. At that point the vPars Monitor is not involved in accessing I/O hardware,

physical memory, or process to processor cycles: the individual HP-UX instances have complete

ownership of their respective hardware resources. This allows each partition to run at full speed.

The commands for the vPars Monitor are shown in the section “vPars Monitor: Using vPars

Monitor Commands” (page 135); however, most of the vPars operations are performed using

vPars commands at the Unix shell level. For more information on the commands, see the chapter

“vPars Monitor and Shell Commands” (page 125).

For information on the vPars Monitor memory usage, see Appendix D (page 319).

vPars Partition Database

At the heart of the vPars Monitor is the partition database. The partition database contains partition

configuration information. Using the partition database, the vPars Monitor tracks which virtual

partitions exist and what hardware resources and partition attributes are associated with each

partition.

When the vPars Monitor boots (see “Boot Sequence” (page 30)), it reads a copy of the partition

database from a file on the same disk from which the vPars Monitor /stand/vpmon is booted.

The default file is /stand/vpdb. Then, the vPars Monitor creates a master copy of the vPars

partition database in the memory reserved by the vPars Monitor.

The operating system of each virtual partition also keeps a local copy of the partition database

in a file, by default /stand/vpdb, on its local boot disk.

vPars Monitor and Database 29