Technical data

Planning nPartition Configurations
HP Superdome nPartition Configuration Guidelines
HP System Partitions Guide: Administration for nPartitions, rev 5.1 116
This provides more appropriate cell assignments for larger
nPartitions (those with more cells). Any smaller nPartitions with
fewer cells are more easily accommodated in the remaining,
available cells.
❏ Place each nPartition within an empty cabinet, if possible.
This applies to nPartitions in HP Superdome 64-way servers only.
If possible, assign each nPartition cells from a cabinet whose cells
have no nPartition assignments. Do this before assigning cells from a
cabinet that already has cells assigned to an nPartition.
To select cells for nPartitions that are larger than six cells, on HP
Superdome 64-way servers, refer Superdome 64-way Supported
nPartition Configurations on page 121. For such larger nPartitions,
assigning some cells from both cabinet 0 and cabinet 1 provides
better performance by better distributing cell communications across
crossbar links.
These guidelines can help minimize contentions for using the
server’s interconnecting hardware (crossbars and crossbar links).
❏ Assign each nPartition cells from an unused “cell quad”, if
possible.
Each “cell quad” is a set of four cells that share the same cabinet
backplane connections (crossbar chips). Within each HP Superdome
cabinet, cell slots 0–3 comprise one cell quad, and cell slots 4–7
comprise the second cell quad.
Because cells in a quad share the same crossbar chips, they have the
best cross-cell memory performance.
Partitions with cells on different crossbar chips have higher memory
latency (worse memory performance) than nPartitions whose cells all
share the same crossbar chip.