Reconfiguring vPars v6 memory with zero downtime

ManualsBrandsHP ManualsSoftwareHP Integrity Virtual Machines Manager (vmmgr) Software

Table of contents

Introduction .............................................................................................................................................................................. 2

Intended audience ................................................................................................................................................................... 2

Acronyms and terms ............................................................................................................................................................... 2

Patch requirement ................................................................................................................................................................... 3

About vPar online memory migration ................................................................................................................................. 3

Base and oating memory .................................................................................................................................................... 3

Allowed memory modication operations ......................................................................................................................... 4

Base and oating memory conguration guidelines ....................................................................................................... 4

Granularity and memory modication ................................................................................................................................ 5

Command-line options for vPar memory conguration ................................................................................................. 6

Memory conguration rules .................................................................................................................................................. 7

Monitoring the status of an online operation .................................................................................................................... 9

Cancelling an online memory migration operation .......................................................................................................... 9

vPar online memory migration – An Illustration ............................................................................................................. 10

Addition of base and oating memory to a live vPar ................................................................................................. 11

Deletion of oating memory from a live vPar .............................................................................................................. 11

Cancelling a memory delete operation on a live vPar ................................................................................................ 13

Using memory deleted from a vPar to start a VM guest ........................................................................................... 14

Comparison with vPars A.05.xx .......................................................................................................................................... 16

Technical white paper

Reconguring vPar memory

with zero downtime

HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM v6.2

Summary of content (16 pages)

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Technical white paper Reconfiguring vPar memory with zero downtime HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM v6.2 Table of contents Introduction............................................................................................................................................................................... 2 Intended audience....................................................................................................................................................................
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Technical white paper | HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM v6.2 Introduction A mission-critical converged infrastructure is an essential component and foundation that can be built upon for the next decade of computing. The latest generation of HP Integrity systems is the culmination of years of trusted HP Integrity resiliency combined with HP Blade System efficiencies.
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Technical white paper | HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM v6.2 Patch requirement vPar version 6.2 must have the patch PHKL_43308 installed to use the online memory migration feature. This patch will be automatically installed as part of the HP-UX 11i v3 March 2013 update. If you are running an HP-UX11i v3 version prior to March 2013 update on your vPar, you must install this patch.
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Technical white paper | HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM v6.2 Allowed memory modification operations The table below summarizes what you can do with each type of memory. vPar state Base Memory Floating Memory ADD DELETE ADD DELETE Online Allowed Not Allowed Allowed Allowed Offline Allowed Allowed Allowed Allowed Base and floating memory configuration guidelines The following provides some guidelines on how to use base and floating memory in a vPar.
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Technical white paper | HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM v6.2 • On a system with heavy amount of memory utilization, the HP-UX kernel might take minutes or even hours to evacuate memory. Hence, it is advisable not to delete floating memory on a heavily loaded system. Such a constraint does not exist while adding more memory. The system administrator can add memory anticipating higher memory utilization or when the memory utilization begins to go up.
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Technical white paper | HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM v6.2 Command-line options for vPar memory configuration The following table shows the options for vpar and hpvm commands. Command Option Description hpvmcreate -a mem:: -x vm _ type=vpar Amount of memory added as base memory for the new vPar. -a mem:::b -x vm _ type=vpar Amount of memory added as base memory for the new vPar. -a mem:::f -x vm _ type=vpar Amount of memory added as floating memory for the new vPar.
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Technical white paper | HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM v6.2 Memory configuration rules The following lists some of base or floating memory configuration rules: 1. When no attribute is specified the memory defaults to base. Hence, base memory can be added or deleted without specifying any attribute or by explicitly including the ‘:b’ attribute. The following lists syntaxes to add base memory.
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Technical white paper | HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM v6.2 5. A memory add or delete and CPU add or delete operation cannot be performed in the same command when the vPar is Online.
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Technical white paper | HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM v6.2 WARNING A very large increase in total memory using hpvmmodify -r option will make floating memory value much larger than base memory, resulting in a vPar panic during boot time. Note that -r option of hpvmmodify(1M) command is deprecated for modification of vPar memory configuration. You can use -a mem|-d mem|-m mem options of hpvmmodify(1M) command to modify memory of a vPar with the recommended base and floating memory values.
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Technical white paper | HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM v6.2 vPar online memory migration – An Illustration This section illustrates the usage of commands through a vPar memory migration example. At each step, appropriate commands are executed to look at the memory usage and monitor the progress of the operation. Only the relevant output from the command is shown.
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Technical white paper | HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM v6.2 Addition of base and floating memory to a live vPar Depending on the memory usage characteristics of a given vPar, the system administrator may decide to add just base memory or just floating memory or both at once. In the following example, we add 1 GB of Base memory and 2 GB of floating memory to vPar0001. # vparmodify -p 1 -a mem::1G -a mem::2G:f vparmodify: A Memory OLAD operation has been initiated for this vPar.
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Technical white paper | HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM v6.2 In the following example, we delete 1 GB of floating memory from vPar0001. Before the operation, we check the memory configuration of vPar0001. # vparstatus -p 1 -v [Virtual Partition Details] Number: 1 Name: vPar0001 RunState: UP State: Active … [Memory Details] Total Memory(MB): 7232 Floating Memory(MB): 2048 Now, we issue the command to delete 1 GB of floating memory from it.
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Technical white paper | HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM v6.2 Cancelling a memory delete operation on a live vPar As mentioned earlier, if a vPar is heavily loaded, the memory migration operation could take a long time to complete. In such cases, you may choose to cancel the operation. In the following example, we start a delete operation on a heavily loaded vPar and then successfully cancel it.
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Technical white paper | HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM v6.2 Using memory deleted from a vPar to start a VM guest Here, we illustrate the point that memory can be freed from a vPar and be used by the system administrator to start a VM guest that did not have enough memory initially to start.
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Technical white paper | HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM v6.2 # vparstatus -p 2 -v [Virtual Partition Details] Number: 2 Name: vPar0002 RunState: UP State: Active … [Memory Details] Total Memory(MB): 9216 Floating Memory(MB): 3072 … [Memory OL* Details] Operation : MEM change Base Memory(MB) : 0 Floating Memory(MB) : 2048 Status: PASS Now, the 2 GB of memory that was freed from vPar0002 is available for use by other vPar or VM guests. This can be seen from the hpvmstatus output.
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Technical white paper | HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM v6.2 Comparison with vPars A.05.xx The following table lists some differentiating points between the memory migration feature offered in the vPars v5 release and vPars v6.2 release. vPars A.05.xx vPars v6.2 When not explicitly stated, the new memory for memory addition is selected from ILM locality. New memory is selected by the virtualization software based on the locality proximity of the vPar and available free memory in the vPar/VM memory pool.