HP Instant Capacity Version 10.x User Guide (5900-1581, March 2011)

6 Instant Capacity Cell Board
This chapter covers the following topics:
• “Instant Capacity Cell Board” (page 65)
• “Ordering Instant Capacity Cell Board” (page 66)
• “HP-UX and OpenVMS License and Support” (page 66)
• “Acquiring Usage Rights for Instant Capacity Cell Board” (page 66)
• “Instant Capacity Cell Board and Considerations of Core Usage Rights” (page 67)
• “Activation of an Instant Capacity Cell Board” (page 68)
• “Accidental Activation of an Instant Capacity Cell Board” (page 68)
• “Instant Capacity Cell Board Activation Exception Error” (page 69)
• “Instant Capacity Cell Board and Temporary Instant Capacity” (page 69)
Instant Capacity Cell Board
Overview
Instant Capacity Cell Board offers a way to have additional (inactive) cell board capacity in your
system for growing business needs. When the need arises, you acquire the necessary usage rights
in order to activate and use the cell boards, which contain memory and processors or cores.
An Instant Capacity cell board is configured at HP manufacturing already assigned to an nPartition
(hard partition) with its use-on-next-boot flag set to n (no), so it does not participate in the boot of
the nPartition.
When you are ready to activate a cell board, you can increase the cell usage rights by either
purchasing the appropriate Right to Use (RTU) products, or by borrowing usage rights if you are
using Global Instant Capacity to share usage rights within a group of servers. To purchase usage
rights, submit a purchase order to HP for the appropriate RTU products to increase the cell usage
rights available on the complex, as well as sufficient usage rights for all of the memory on the cell
board and, depending on the available usage rights and existing complex configuration, usage
rights for one or more additional cores. Then, the cell board is available for activation and
participation in the boot of the nPartition. This is controlled by setting the use-on-next-boot flag to
y (yes) with the parmodify command and rebooting the nPartition.
NOTE: If usage rights for the cell board, its memory, and at least one core are insufficient, the
Instant Capacity software prevents the cell board from being configured to participate (become
active) in the boot of an nPartition.
Any cell board, whether or not usage rights are available for activation, can be assigned to an
nPartition with the use-on-next-boot flag set to n (no).
Because an active cell board must have a minimum of 1 active core, prior to activation of a cell
board one of the following must be true:
• Usage rights for at least one additional core must be available in the complex. There must be
at least one active core per cell board. The Instant Capacity software redistributes active cores
across all cell boards in the partition.
• Usage rights for at least one additional core must be purchased and the RTU codeword must
be applied to the complex.
• If the complex is a member of a Global Instant Capacity (GiCAP) group, usage rights for at
least one additional core must be available from the group.
Instant Capacity Cell Board 65