Planning Your Virtual Partitions

Recommended Number of Partitions

For performance reasons, HP recommends the following:

Maximum Number of Partitions

The maximum number of partitions for the L3000 and N-class computers is the number of CPUs given the following limitations:

Virtual Partition Names

All virtual partitions must be given text names that are used by the vPars commands. The names can consists of only alphanumeric characters and periods ('.'). The maximum length of a name is 239 characters.

HP recommends using the corresponding hostnames for partition names, but they are not internally related.

For our example computer, we have chosen the names of our partitions to be winona1, winona2, and winona3:

Although the underscore (_) is a legal character within the name of a virtual partition, it is not a legal character within the Domain Name System (DNS) and should not be used.

Minimal Hardware Configuration

Every bootable virtual partition must have at least:

Although not required for booting a partition, you might want to add LAN card(s) as required for networking.

For your partitions, use the number of CPUs, amount of memory, boot disk configuration, and lan cards as is appropriate for your OS and applications.

CPUs

For detailed information on CPU allocation, please read “CPU Allocation”.

The ioscan output for the example N-class shows the following processors:

#ioscan -kC processor
H/W Path       Class                        Description	===================================================
33            processor                 Processor
37            processor                 Processor
41            processor                 Processor
45            processor                 Processor
97            processor                 Processor
101           processor                 Processor
105           processor                 Processor
109           processor                 Processor

For this example, winona1 will have two bound CPUs, winona2 will have two bound CPUs where the hardware paths will be 41 and 45, and winona3 will have one bound CPU.

Partition Name	winona1	winona2	winona3
Bound CPUs	total = 2 min = 2	total = 2 min = 2 paths = 41,45	total = 1 min = 1

Unbound CPUs are assigned in quantity. We have three CPUs that were not assigned to any of the partitions, so we will have three unbound CPUs available.

Unbound CPUs

three CPUs are available

Memory

For detailed information on memory allocation, please read “Memory Allocation”.

In this example, we will use the following sizes:

Partition Name	winona1	winona2	winona3
Memory	640 MB	1280 MB	1280 MB

I/O

For detailed information on I/O Assignments, see “I/O Allocation”.

For simplified I/O block diagrams of the LBA to physical slot relationship, see Appendix A “Hardware Path to Physical I/O Slot Correspondence”.

Assigning I/O at the LBA Level.

For our example computer, the ioscan output shows the LBAs as:

#ioscan -k | grep "Bus Adapter" H/W Path Class Description =========================================================== 0/0 ba Local PCI Bus Adapter (782) 0/1 ba Local PCI Bus Adapter (782) 0/2 ba Local PCI Bus Adapter (782) 0/4 ba Local PCI Bus Adapter (782) 0/5 ba Local PCI Bus Adapter (782) 0/8 ba Local PCI Bus Adapter (782) 0/10 ba Local PCI Bus Adapter (782) 0/12 ba Local PCI Bus Adapter (782) 1/0 ba Local PCI Bus Adapter (782) 1/2 ba Local PCI Bus Adapter (782) 1/4 ba Local PCI Bus Adapter (782) 1/8 ba Local PCI Bus Adapter (782) 1/10 ba Local PCI Bus Adapter (782) 1/12 ba Local PCI Bus Adapter (782)

Looking at the full ioscan output to verify that we have the desired I/O for each partition, we will assign the I/O at the LBA level. (When assigning hardware at the LBA level to a partition, all hardware at and below the specified LBA is assigned to the partition.):

Partition Name	winona1	winona2	winona3
I/0 Paths (LBAs)	0/0 boot/lan 0/4	0/8 boot 1/10 lan	0/5 lan 1/4 boot

Ensuring the Hardware Console Port Is Owned by the First Virtual Partition

In our example computer, the hardware console port is at 0/0/4/0, which uses the LBA at 0/0. The LBA 0/0 is owned by the partition winona1:

console port	0/0/4/0
LBA	0/0
partition	winona1

When we create the virtual partitions, we will create winona1 first.

console port

owned by winona1

	CAUTION: One of the virtual partitions must own the LBA that contains the physical hardware console port.

Choosing the Boot and Lan Paths

Using the full ioscan output, we chose the following boot disk path and note the LAN card path:

Partition Name	winona1	winona2	winona3
Boot Path	0/0/2/0.6.0	0/8/0/0.5.0	1/4/0/0.5.0
LAN	0/0/0/0	1/10/0/0/4/0	0/5/0/0/4/0

Autoboot

Autoboot allows a partition to be booted automatically on a cold boot of the computer. By default, autoboot is set to AUTO for all partitions.

Partition Name	winona1	winona2	winona3
Autoboot	AUTO	AUTO	AUTO

For more information, see the vparmodify(1M) manpage.

	NOTE: When using vparboot -I to install vPars, you need to leave the autoboot attribute set to AUTO during the installation due to the required reboots that occur during the installation. After installation is complete, you can set the autoboot attribute to MANUAL using the vparmodify command. For example, after installation is complete, to set the autoboot attribute to MANUAL for the partition winona3: # vparmodify -p winona3 -B manual

Partition Plan

Combining all parts above, the resultant partition plan is the following:

Partition Name	winona1	winona2	winona3
CPUs	total = 2 min = 2	total = 2 min = 2 paths = 41,45	total = 1 min = 1
Unbound CPUs	three CPUs are available
Memory	640 MB	1280 MB	1280 MB
I/0 Paths (LBAs)	0/0 0/4	0/8 1/10	0/5 1/4
Boot Path	0/0/2/0.6.0	0/8/0/0.5.0	1/4/0/0.5.0
LAN	0/0/0/0	1/10/0/0/4/0	0/5/0/0/4/0
console port	owned by winona1
Autoboot	AUTO	AUTO	AUTO