HP Integrity Essentials Global Workload Manager: Workload Management for HP Integrity Virtual Machines

Introduction

Virtualization is a key trend in the IT industry today, making it possible to run multiple “virtual

machines” inside a physical machine for higher resource utilization and increased flexibility. The HP

Virtual Server Environment (VSE), an integrated virtualization solution for HP Integrity server platforms,

enables you to achieve a greater return on your IT investments by optimizing server resource

utilization in real time according to business priorities. Through tight integration with partitioning, high

availability, and utility pricing, HP VSE allows you to maintain service levels in the event of downtime

and to pay for spare capacity on an as-needed basis.

HP VSE provides many virtualization technologies that pool and share resources to meet demands

automatically and most effectively. One such technology is HP Integrity Virtual Machines (VM);

another is HP Integrity Essentials Global Workload Manager (gWLM). This paper is for Integrity VM

users who would like to reap greater benefits by using gWLM to centrally manage the resource

utilization and service levels of virtual machines created using Integrity VM. The versions of the

products addressed in this paper are Integrity VM Version 2.0 and gWLM Version A.02.50.

gWLM provides centralized, intelligent, policy-based resource management, allowing you to establish

resource-sharing policies that can be used across multiple partitioned systems. Any resource managed

by gWLM is associated with a collection of processes that is assigned to a specific workload. For

example, the collection of processes that run within a particular virtual machine can be managed as

one workload, while the processes that run within another virtual machine configured on the same

Integrity VM can be managed as a separate workload. gWLM monitors workloads and automatically

allocates resources to those workloads across partitions to increase server utilization while satisfying

workload service level objectives. gWLM can manage the real-time resource allocation of hard

partitions (HP hardware partitions or nPartitions), soft partitions (HP-UX Virtual Partitions, also called

vPars, and virtual machines), resource partitions, and nested partitions. (Resource partitions consist of

whole-core processor sets, known as PSETs, or sub-core Fair Share Scheduler groups, known as FSS

groups. A core is the actual, physical data-processing engine within a processor. A single processor

might have multiple cores.)

You can use gWLM with the Integrity VM product in several ways. For example, you might use gWLM

to manage the VM Host as a single workload. In this case, your gWLM policies would apply to the

VM Host while Integrity VM entitlements continue to determine resource allocation for the virtual

machines. A more practical and effective use of gWLM is to use it to manage the virtual machines as

individual workloads. In this way, you can have the flexible and powerful gWLM policies determine

resource allocation for the virtual machines and thereby provide a tighter coupling between the

behavior of the virtual machines and your business goals and needs. This paper focuses on the latter

application of gWLM.

Why Use gWLM with Integrity Virtual Machines

HP Integrity Virtual Machines provides better use of your Integrity server capacity, allowing you to run

multiple virtual machines on a single server and easily share computing resources. Using gWLM to

manage your virtual machines extends and enhances their effectiveness. The most important benefits

of using gWLM to manage your virtual machines are:

• Automatic and extensive resource management capabilities that you can align closely with your

business priorities

• Automatic activation and deactivation of Instant Capacity (iCAP) and Temporary Instant Capacity

(TiCAP) resources, distributing them as needed according to your business priorities

• Simplified, centralized management across multiple servers through a web-based central

management system integrated with HP Systems Insight Manager (SIM); this facility provides a

unified, consistent interface for management of multiple partition types