HP Integrity Virtual Machines Installation, Configuration, and Administration Version A.03.50

• The amount of memory required by the guest operating system. For example, the HP-UX
11i v2 operating system requires 1 GB of memory.
• The amount of memory required by the applications running on the guest.
The amount of memory should be at least the total of these two amounts. If there is not enough
memory in the current configuration, Integrity VM issues a warning but allows you to create the
virtual machine. This allows you to create virtual machines for future configurations. When the
virtual machine is started, the VM Host checks memory resources, including those allocated to
running guests, and makes sure that there is sufficient memory to run the virtual machine. In
addition to the amount of memory you specify for the virtual machine, the VM Host requires a
certain amount of overhead for booting the guest operating system. The amount of memory
allocated to all the running guests cannot exceed the amount of physical memory minus the
amount used by the VM Host for its operating system and its administrative functions. For more
information about the memory requirements of the VM Host, see Section 2.1 (page 25).
Guest memory allocation can be viewed and allocated dynamically (that is, without stopping
the guest) by using dynamic memory parameters, as described in Section 9.6 (page 130).
3.1.6 Virtual Devices
Use the -a option to allocate virtual network switches and virtual storage devices to the virtual
machine. The VM Host presents devices to the virtual machine as “virtual devices.” Attached
I/O devices, such as tape, DVD burner, and autochanger, are not presented as virtual devices;
they are presented as direct I/O device. You specify both the physical device to allocate to the
virtual machine and the virtual device name that the virtual machine will use to access the device.
The following sections provide brief instructions for creating virtual network devices and virtual
storage devices.
3.1.6.1 Creating Virtual Network Devices
The guest virtual network consists of:
• Virtual network interface cards (vNICs)
• Virtual switches (vswitches)
For virtual machines to communicate either with other virtual machines or outside the VM Host
system, each virtual machine's virtual network must be associated with a virtual switch (vswitch).
If you start a virtual machine without a vswitch, the virtual machine has no network
communication channel.
Each guest can have two different types of LAN network devices, VIO and AVIO. For VIO guest
networks, a vswitch functions just like a physical network interface card (pNIC), accepting
network traffic from one or more virtual machines and directing network traffic to all of its ports.
A vswitch without the backing of a host physical network card can be used by VIO guest devices
for communication among VIO guest devices registered with the same vswitch. This type of
vswitch is typically referred to as localnet. For more information, see Section 8.2.1.1 (page 112).
Unlike VIO guest networks, traffic from an AVIO guest LAN network device is directed to the
pNIC directly by a separate host module rather than by the vswitch. In addition, AVIO does not
support localnet type vswitch, because each AVIO guest device must have a backing of the
host physical device.
You can create vswitches before or after creating guests that access the vswitches. If you create
the virtual machine before creating the vswitch, the virtual machine is created and warning
messages display the specific problem. This allows you to create virtual machines for future
configurations.
To create a vswitch, enter the hpvmnet -c command. Include the —S option to specify the name
of the virtual switch. For example:
# hpvmnet -c -S vswitch-name -n nic-id
where:
34 Creating Virtual Machines