Implementing a Virtual Server Environment: Getting Started

nPartitions If hardware or electrical isolation required.
If work load needs dedicated hw resources.
Virtual Partitions If hardware or electrical isolation not required.
If work load needs dedicated hw resources.
If workload is not suitable for a VM: (e.g. Needs dedicated hardware
resources or is I/O-intensive.
Integrity Virtual
Machines
If hardware or electrical isolation not required.
If work load does not need dedicated hw resources.
If workload requirements are often sub-CPU (smaller than 1 core).
If workload runs with 8 cores or fewer.
If workload not I/O intensive.
Resource Partitions
or Secure Resource
Partitions
If hw/electrical isolation not required.
If applications can run on same instance of HP-UX, with same patch levels and
same kernel tunables.
Note:
If you are seriously considering Integrity Virtual Machines, refer to the white
paper entitled, “Hardware Consolidation with Integrity Virtual Machines.”
It can help you determine which workloads are good candidates for
Integrity VMs. It also provides recommendations for assessing the
performance of your current workloads (both CPU and I/O), and can help
you size the target hardware for the VM Host. There is also
another white paper entitled “HP Integrity VM Accelerated I/O (AVIO)
Overview”. See the links for both at the end of this paper.
Choose the type of Integrity server
There are many different choices for Integrity servers, ranging from server blades and entry class
server (non-cell based) to mid-range and high-end servers (cell based). Now that you understand the
hardware resource requirements of each workload, and you know which workloads are candidates
for particular types of partitioning solutions, you can decide what type of Integrity servers you need.
The information from the preceding worksheets will help you later in the process when you determine
how to combine or group partitions on a server. Additionally, it will help you determine whether or
not resources can be shared effectively between those partitions or certain application workloads.
If you need nPars or vPars, you must move to a cell-based server. If you think you will want to take
advantage of iCAP or TiCAP resources, then you must also choose a cell-based server. If you only
need Integrity Virtual Machines or want to do application stacking with Secure Resource Partitions,
you do not need a cell-based server.
If you want to consolidate applications from a lot of servers, you might want to consider the larger
cell-based servers, which will give you all of the options for partitioning. It might cost more initially
than a one-for-one server-replacement strategy, but when you consider the resource- sharing potential
as well as the ability to more rapidly create new partitions and deploy new instances of applications,
this might be more cost effective than it appears. This approach might also offer indirect cost savings
in reduced floor space, power, and cooling requirements.
At this point, you have essentially completed a server consolidation exercise and have created a plan
to reduce the number of physical servers in your data center with the addition of new servers and the
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