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

Introduction

HP Product Interaction

Chapter 1

• Ignite-UX and other Curses Applications

On the virtual console, when using applications that use curses, such as the terminal versions of

Ignite-UX and SAM, do not press Ctrl-A to toggle to the console display window of another virtual

partition while you are still within the curses application. This is especially applicable when you are

using vparboot -I and the Ignite-UX application to install vPars. For more information on curses, see

the curses_intro (3X) manpage.

As with most curses applications, if you get a garbled display, you can press Ctrl-L to refresh the display.

• ServiceGuard

ServiceGuard is supported with vPars. However, because ServiceGuard is used to guard against hardware

failures as well as software failures, its functionality will be reduced if a cluster includes multiple virtual

partitions within the same server. Such configurations are not recommended. See the ServiceGuard

documentation for more information on running Service Guard with vPars.

• UPS (uninterruptible power supply) software

UPS hardware communicates with UPS software via the serial port. By default, a hard partition has only

one serial port. For a hard partition that runs vPars, the serial port can be owned by at most one virtual

partition. Therefore, on the hard partition, the UPS can communicate with only the virtual partition that

owns the serial port.

Alternately, the HP PowerTrust II-MR UPS product can be configured across virtual partitions using

network connections, providing all the virtual partitions reside on the same network.

• Processor Sets

vPars A.03.XX and earlier: you cannot specify a hardware path for an unbound CPU. Therefore, to avoid

unintentionally removing unbound CPUs from a non-default pset, initially create the partition that will

be running Processor Sets using only bound CPUs. Then, when you add or remove an unbound CPU, the

unbound CPU will be added to or removed from only the default pset.

• Glance and Openview Performance Agent (MeasureWare)

For correct reporting of CPU utilization, you need to run Glance and MeasureWare versions C.03.35. or

higher.

• Real-time clock

The Monitor keeps track of the OS time for each virtual partition relative to the real-time clock. The OS

time is the time that is changed via the set_parms or date commands.

However, you can change the real-time clock at the BCH prompt. If you change the real-time clock, you

need to run the Monitor command toddriftreset to reset the drifts relative to the real-time clock. For

information on the Monitor commands, see “Monitor: Using Monitor Commands” on page 103.

• SCSI Initiator ID (PA-RISC only)

For vPars A.03.xx and earlier: the SCSI Initiator ID is the ID of the SCSI controller. Although you can

display and set SCSI parameters for the SCSI controller at the BCH prompt, on a vPars server, you can

also set these values from the HP-UX shell of a virtual partition using the vPars command vparutil. For

more information, see the vparutil (1M) manpage.

For vPars A.04.xx and later: please use the mptutil command. For information on mptutil, see the

Ultra320 SCSI Support Guide or the support guide for your card.