HP-UX Workload Manager Toolkits User's Guide

HP-UX Workload Manager Overview
What is HP-UX Workload Manager?
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1 HP-UX Workload Manager
Overview
This chapter provides an overview of the HP-UX Workload Manager
product and its supporting toolkits.
What is HP-UX Workload Manager?
HP-UX Workload Manager (WLM) is a virtualization solution that helps
you achieve a true Adaptive Enterprise. As a goal-based policy engine in
the HP Virtual Server Environment (VSE), WLM integrates
virtualization techniques—including partitioning, resource
management, utility pricing resources, and clustering—and links them
to your business priorities and service level objectives (SLOs). WLM
enables a virtual HP-UX server to grow and shrink automatically, based
on the demands and SLOs for each application it hosts. You can
consolidate multiple applications onto a single server to receive greater
return on your IT investment while ensuring that end-users receive the
service and performance they expect.
WLM manages CPU resources (cores) within and across hard partitions
and virtual partitions. (A core is the actual data-processing engine
within a processor, where a processor might have multiple cores.) It
automatically adapts partitions’ CPU resources to the demands, SLOs,
and priorities of the applications running in those partitions. On systems
with HP Instant Capacity (iCAP), WLM automatically moves cores
among partitions based on the SLOs in the partitions. Given the physical
nature of hard partitions, the “movement” of cores among partitions is
achieved by deactivating a core on one nPartition and then activating a
core on another.
A workload is a group of processes that are treated as a single unit for
the purposes of resource management. For example, a database
application that consists of multiple cooperating processes is considered