Technical data

nPartition System Overviews

Overview of nPartitions

HP System Partitions Guide: Administration for nPartitions, rev 5.1

Overview of nPartitions

On HP’s nPartition servers, each nPartition is a “logical system” that

has its own dedicated portion of the server hardware that can run a

single instance of the HP-UX 11i operating system. Each nPartition can

boot, reboot, and operate independently of any other nPartitions and

hardware within the same server complex.

Each nPartition has one or more cells (containing processors and

memory) that are assigned to the nPartition for its exclusive use. Any

I/O chassis that is attached to a cell belonging to an nPartition also is

assigned to the nPartition. (Each chassis has PCI card slots plus any I/O

cards and attached devices, and may also have core I/O.)

The server complex includes all hardware within an nPartition server:

all cabinets, cells, I/O chassis, I/O devices and racks, management and

interconnecting hardware, power supplies, and fans.

You can conﬁgure one or more nPartitions within a server complex,

allowing the hardware to function as a single HP-UX 11i system or as

many systems.

The following concepts and issues related to nPartitions are introduced

in the rest of this section:

• Cell Properties on page 61

• Genesis Partition on page 63

• Partition Numbers on page 64

• nPartition Local and Remote Access on page 64

• nPartition Active and Inactive States on page 66