HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM V6.3 Administrator Guide

11 PCI OLR support on VSPs
Online Addition, Replacement and Removal of PCI I/O devices (PCI OLARD) is an important value
proposition of HP Integrity Superdome 2 (SD2) platforms. The OLR functionality provides assurance
of continued system availability even when potential problems are identified with active I/O
resources.
On SD2 platforms configured as VSP with versions earlier to HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM 6.3,
PCI OLR operations are possible only on the host for host devices which are not used by any active
guests (both vPars and Integrity VMs).
With the release of HP-UX 11i v3 AR1403 and HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM V6.3, the PCI OLR
infrastructure on host and guests have been integrated to ensure that, if required, host devices
acting as backing stores or backing interfaces for active guests can be replaced without downtime
for any guest or host. The olrad(1M) command performs and collates CRA (Critical Resource
Analysis) within each guest active on the PCI I/O device that must be replaced. After the PCI I/O
device is replaced, all I/O activity within host and all affected guests resume.
11.1 Online Addition and Deletion of PCI I/O devices
On platforms that support it, PCI OLA operations are used to add a new PCI I/O card to running
operating system instances. With V6.3, for both vPar and Integrity VM guests equivalent functionality
is provided by the enhanced hpvmmodify(1M) command. This feature is referred to as Dynamic
I/O Addition (not to be confused with Direct I/O).
11.2 Use cases and benefits of PCI OLR on a VSP
PCI OLR functionality helps to ensure high availability of supported platforms by making it possible
to replace I/O cards that shows failure indications without any system downtime.
11.3 Dependencies and prerequisites
11.3.1 Software dependencies
The changes are made to both the PCI OLR infrastructure on host and guests. In addition to HP-UX
vPars and Integrity VM V6.3, the following host patches are required on SD2 VSP to enable this
functionality.
• PHKL_42548
• PHCO_42592
• PHCO_42623
• PHCO_43715
You must ensure that the guest kit on all guests running on the SD2 VSP is upgraded to the V6.3
release.
11.3.2 Hardware dependencies
PCI OLR functionality for VSPs is supported only on the SD2 platforms.
11.4 Performing PCI OLR on a VSP
Online replacement of I/O cards on a SD2 server configured as a VSP is done exactly the way it
is done on a native SD2 server. This section describes additional aspects that apply only to a SD2
server configured as a VSP, including additional aspects considered during a CRA for various
types of I/O devices, additional CRA logs and errors, and the differences with respect to time
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