HP Instant Capacity Version 10.x User Guide (762794-001, March 2014)

Group compliance
When a group is out of compliance, the group is locked. Sharing of usage rights and temporary
capacity among members of the group is not allowed, although members can return borrowed
usage rights or reclaim loaned rights. Members cannot be added to the group, but members can
be removed from the group if they deactivate any cores using borrowed usage rights and if GiCAP
is able to reclaim any loaned usage rights.
When such an incompatibility is detected, the GiCAP Group Manager sends an email to the local
root account and to the registered contact email address of each member of the group.
Multiple group considerations
You can create multiple GiCAP groups, and they can be managed by the same Group Manager
or by different Group Manager systems. Note that if a Group Manager has an associated standby
Group Manager, the standby Group Manager functions as a standby for all the groups managed
by that Group Manager.
A server complex can only be a member of a single GiCAP group at a time. To participate in a
different group, it must be removed from its group before being added to the other group.
Sharing rights can never be transferred between two active Group Manager systems. As you create
new groups or add new members to existing groups, you might need to purchase and apply
additional sharing rights to the relevant active Group Manager systems. This is necessary even if
the member is moved from another Group Manager that now has excess sharing rights.
Sharing rights can never be applied to a Group Manager with standby status. If a standby Group
Manager is requested to take control, the sharing rights of the former active Group Manager move
to it. If additional sharing rights need to be applied before failing back to the original Group
Manager, they must be purchased specifically for the new active Group Manager system (formerly
the standby Group Manager) and acquired from the portal. After it is applied, the new total of
sharing rights move to the originally active Group Manager if it is requested to retake control.
Although only if the new active Group Manager is able to propagate its GiCAP database to the
originally active Group Manager. For more information, see “Group manager failover
considerations”.
Group manager failover considerations
If the active Group Manager system becomes unavailable, the standby Group Manager can take
over GiCAP group operations from the Group Manager. If both the active Group Manager and
the standby Group Manager are unavailable, or if the active Group Manager fails and the
icapmanage -Q command was not issued to make the standby Group Manager, the active
Group Manager usage rights and temporary capacity remain as per allocated to each group
member. Within a server complex, the usage rights can be deployed to other partitions, but
movement of usage rights and temporary capacity between complexes cannot occur.
An administrator can make a standby Group Manager take control at any time using the
icapmanage -Q command. While this can be done routinely, for example, to shut down a
functioning active Group Manager for maintenance, this command is normally issued either when
the active Group Manager fails, or when a network outage makes it unable to communicate with
critical group members. When a standby manager itakes control, it attempts to update all members
and the current active Group Manager so that group operations can proceed smoothly.
However, in the case of a failure, it is possible that the icapmanage -Q command is unable to
contact the active Group Manager and some members of the groups that it now manages. When
this happens, the previously active Group Manager remains active, unaware of the change of
control. This is referred to as a bifurcated (or split) GiCAP group. Reachable members start accepting
commands from the standby Group manager while unreachable members continue to consider
the previous Group manager active. Control operations can be carried out on both active Group
Managers, each communicating with the members that only it can reach. Groups and members
can be added or removed on both (subject to the set of members each can command), and sharing
199