HP-UX Virtual Partitions Administrator's Guide (includes A.05.02)

Introduction
What Is vPars?
Chapter 1
19
Figure 1-2A Superdome Cabinet
A hard partition is any isolated hardware environment, such as an nPartition within a
Superdome complex or an entire rp7400/N4000 server.
An nPartition is a subset of a complex that divides the complex into groups of cell boards
where each group operates independently of other groups. An nPartition can run a single
instance of HP-UX or be further divided into virtual partitions.
A virtual partition is a software partition of a hard partition that contains an instance of
HP-UX. Though a hard partition can contain multiple virtual partitions, a virtual partition
cannot span a hard partition boundary.
Product Features
• A single hard partition can be divided into multiple virtual partitions.
• Each virtual partition runs its own instance of HP-UX. Therefore, a single hard partition can contain
multiple virtual partitions, and each virtual partition has a separate instance of HP-UX running different
applications (or the same applications) at the same time without conflicts.
• Each virtual partition is assigned its own resources (cores, memory, and I/O), so there are no resource
conflicts between virtual partitions.
• Virtual partitions can have different OS releases and patch levels.
• Virtual partitions can be individually reconfigured and rebooted (for patches and other changes that
require a reboot).
• Users on one virtual partition cannot access files or file systems on other partitions unless the file
systems are NFS-mounted, or access is otherwise given through networking or for cluster-aware volume
groups used within ServiceGuard. Further, users configured on one virtual partition do not automatically
have access on any other partition.
• Software-related kernel panics
1
, resource exhaustion failures, and reboots in one virtual partition do not
affect any other virtual partition.
1. Unless the vPars software product itself panics.