HP-UX Virtual Partitions Administrator's Guide (includes A.03.05 and A.04.05)

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 Monitor transfers ownership of the hardware to the

virtual partition. At that point the 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 “Monitor: Using Monitor

Commands” (page 127); 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

“Monitor and Shell Commands” (page 117).

For information on the vPars Monitor memory usage, see Appendix D (page 309).

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 Monitor tracks which virtual partitions

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

When the Monitor boots (see “Boot Sequence” (page 32)), it reads a copy of the partition database

from a file on the same disk from which the Monitor /stand/vpmon is booted. The default file

is /stand/vpdb. Then, the Monitor creates a master copy of the vPars partition database in the

memory reserved by the 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 31