Best Practices for Integrity Virtual Machines

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Take Advantage of HP-UX on the Host
The Integrity VM software includes the HP-UX 11i Foundation Operating Environment (OE) which
executes on the Integrity Server used to host virtual machines. Having the HP-UX 11i Foundation OE
on the VM Host provides all of the basic HP-UX functionality including HP system management tools
as well as a typical UNIX environment. Moreover, the VM Host supports the same devices and
peripherals as any other Integrity Server running HP-UX 11i. Having the Foundation OE on the VM
Host leverages the extensive testing, reliability and maturity of the HP-UX 11i operating system.
System Management and Security
Device and overall system management of the VM Host benefits from the availability of existing
management tools such as System Management Homepage (SMH). Configuration and management
of storage devices, a critical task in deploying virtual machines, is made easy with these tools.
Both HP’s Logical Volume Manager (LVM) and the VERITAS Volume Manager (VxVM) may be used
for storage configuration and management on the VM Host. That is, logical volumes created on the
VM Host with either LVM or VxVM can be used as virtual storage for VMs. Integrity VM version 2.0
and later is compatible with versions 3.5 and 4.1 of VxVM.
Software deployment and management on the VM Host is enhanced by the availability of
• Ignite-UX
• Software Distributor-UX
• Update-UX
• Patch Assessment Tool
Security of the VM Host and the related benefits to the virtual machines running there is extended by
the availability of both HP-UX Bastille and the Security Patch Check tools.
Workload Management
The workload management tool of choice for Integrity Virtual Machines is HP’s global Workload
Manager (gWLM). It is closely integrated with the Integrity VM product and provides a rich set of
features for managing virtual machines as workloads. Many other workload management products
are not supported for use on the VM Host itself, including HP’s Process Resource Manager (PRM). The
Workload Manager (WLM) product may be used on the VM Host to manage that system’s instant
capacity resources, but it cannot be used to manage the virtual machines. Partitioning technologies
such as virtual partitions (vPars) and processor sets (PSETs) are not supported on the VM Host.
The GlancePlus Pak may also be used for virtual machine workload management, providing all the
familiar concepts and use cases common to the Glance and OpenView Performance Agent products
as well as integration with OpenView management products.
Instant Capacity
HP’s high-end Integrity Servers provide immediate access to additional capacity with the Instant
Capacity and Temporary Instant Capacity products. Having the option of instant availability to
additional resources on the VM Host is a powerful tool in addressing increases – permanent or
temporary – in aggregate resource demand from virtual machines running there. For example, when
Instant Capacity on the VM Host is used to enable additional CPU resources they are immediately
available to the Integrity VM scheduler for allocation to the virtual machines running there.