Installing and Managing HP-UX Virtual Partitions (includes A.04.01)

Introduction

HP Product Interaction

Chapter 1

HP Product Interaction

• nPartitions

(vPars A.03.xx and earlier) Parmgr Requirements: For information on which version of Partition

Manager (parmgr) is required with vPars, please see the document Read Before Installing HP-UX Virtual

Partitions available at http://docs.hp.com/hpux/11i/index.html#Virtual%20Partitions. For information on

installing Partition Manager, see “Installing and Removing vPars-related Bundles” on page 64.

vPars on nPartitions Conceptual Points:

— Only one vPars Monitor is booted per nPartition.

— Virtual partitions exist within an nPartition, but they cannot span across nPartitions.

— Each virtual partition within a given nPartition can be assigned a subset of only the hardware

assigned to the nPartition. Furthermore, only the active hardware assigned to the nPartition can be

used by the virtual partitions within the nPartition.

— nPartitions remain isolated from other nPartitions, regardless of whether vPars is installed. You can

have virtual partitions installed within an nPartition without affecting the other nPartitions.

— The vPars database is entirely separate from the nPartition complex profile data. Therefore, a

change in the vPars partition database does not change any complex profile data. For an example on

changing information in both the vPars partition database and the nPartition complex profile, see

“Using Primary and Alternate Paths with nPartitions” on page 137.

— If there is a pending reboot for reconfiguration (RFR) for the involved nPartition, no virtual

partitions will be rebooted until all the virtual partitions within the given nPartition are shut down

and the involved vPars Monitor is rebooted. This implies that the target virtual partition of the

vparload, vparboot, and vparreset commands will not boot until all virtual partitions within the

nPartition have been shut down and the vPars Monitor is rebooted.

— For more information on performing nPartition operations within a virtual partition, see “Managing:

Performing nPartition Operations” on page 126. For more information on using the -R and -r options

of the shutdown and reboot commands used in a RFR, see “shutdown and reboot commands” on

page 26.

— For more information, see “Boot||Shut: Shutting Down or Rebooting the nPartition (OR Rebooting

the vPars Monitor)” on page 132 and the vPars Monitor command “reboot [mode]” on page 105.

— For a given nPartition, the Virtual Front Panel (VFP) displays an OS heartbeat whenever at least

one virtual partition within the nPartition is up.

— All vPars within an nPartition share the same console device. For a given nPartition, this is the

nPartition’s console. For more information on the console and console logs, see “Virtual Consoles” on

page 38 and “nPartition Logs” on page 40.

For more information on the nPartition hardware, see the manual HP Systems Partition Guide.

NOTE Note: unlike the rp7400/N4000, on a Superdome and other nPartition servers, the first

element of the hardware path of the ioscan output is the cell number.

For example, on the rp7400/N4000 the ioscan output shows:

0/0 ba Local PCI Bus Adapter (782)