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

1 Introduction
With the increased demand for Information Technology in recent years, data centers have seen a
rapid growth in the IT infrastructure (servers, storage, networking) deployment. However, this sprawl
has resulted in data centers having server hardware that is being underutilized. The same data
centers are facing increasing demand for new applications that results in an increased demand
for servers to satisfy their customers. These seemingly contradictory situations have led solution
architects to conclude that they must be able to make better use of the resources they have already
deployed. The HP-UX virtualization continuum offers several virtualization and partitioning
technologies to help HP-UX customers deploy mission-critical applications in a manner that best
aligns to their business goals.
1.1 HP-UX Virtualization Continuum
HP-UX has traditionally catered to differing workload or applications need by offering products
based on partitioning and virtualization technologies. The partitioning solutions such as nPartition
or Virtual Partition (vPar) have higher degrees of isolation and lesser resource sharing. At the other
end of the spectrum, there are products based on Virtualization technology such as Integrity Virtual
Machines, which have a higher degree of sharing of resources at the cost of lesser isolation.
1.1.1 HP-UX Virtual Partitions
The HP-UX Virtual Partitions (vPars) product runs multiple instances of HP-UX simultaneously on one
server, or nPartition, by dividing it into vPars. Each vPar is assigned its own subset of hardware,
runs a separate instance of HP-UX, and hosts its own set of applications. vPars provide application
and operating system fault isolation.
The earlier version of the vPars product is Version A.05.10.
1.1.2 HP Integrity Virtual Machine
The HP Integrity Virtual Machine (Integrity VM) is a soft partitioning and virtualization technology
that provides operation system isolation, with sub-CPU allocation granularity and shared I/O. The
Integrity VM environment consists of two types of components:
• VM Host
• Virtual Machines (also called guests or VMs)
The VM host virtualizes physical processors, memory, and I/O devices, allowing you to allocate
them as virtual resources to each VM.
The earlier version of the Integrity Virtual Machines product is Version 4.3.
1.2 Technology Convergence – vPars and Integrity VM V6
HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM Version 6 is a product that brings together vPars and Integrity Virtual
Machines technology into a single, common, and easy-to-use management environment. Converging
a soft partitioning technology and a virtualization technology into a single product, provides
customer with a range of options. To improve system utilization, vPars can be preferred for
mission-critical workloads that are CPU and IO intensive, whereas Integrity VMs can be chosen
for consolidating physical systems into a virtualized environment. vPars and Integrity VM Version
6 solves the problem of lower server utilization and the simultaneous demand for greater server
capacity to run mission-critical applications.
vPars and Integrity VM Version 6 provides the following unique features:
• Increased utilization and scalability.
• More flexibility and capacity.
1.1 HP-UX Virtualization Continuum 17