Supported Environments

nPartitions. For informaion on which version of Partition Manager (parmgr) is required with vPars, please see the document Read Before Installing HP-UX Virtual Partitions available as the vPars CD booklet and at http://docs.hp.com/hpux/11i/index.html#Virtual%20Partitions. For information on installing Partition Manager, see “Installing and Removing vPars-related Bundles”.

Only one vPars monitor is booted per nPartition.

Virtual partitions exist within an nPartition, but they cannot span across nPartitions.

All cells of the nPartition must reside in the same cabinet.

For a given nPartition, the Virtual Front Panel (VFP) displays an OS heartbeat whenever at least one virtual partition within the nPartition is up.

Each virtual partition within a given nPartition can be assigned a subset of only the hardware assigned to the nPartition. Furthermore, only the active hardware assigned to the nPartition can be used by the virtual partitions within the nPartition.

All vPars within a nPartition share the same console device. For a given nPartition, this is the nPartition's console. For more information on the console and console logs, see “Virtual Consoles” and “Logs on a nPartition Server”.

nPartitions remain isolated from other nPartitions, regardless of whether vPars is installed. You can have virtual partitions installed within a nPartition without affecting the other nPartitions.

The vPars database is entirely separate from the nPartition complex profile data. Therefore, a change in the vPars partition database does not change any complex profile data. For an example on changing information in both the vPars partition database and the nPartition complex profile, see “Using Primary and Alternate Paths with nPartitions”.

If there is a pending reboot for reconfiguration (RFR) for the involved nPartition, no virtual partitions will be rebooted until all the virtual partitions within the given nPartition are shut down and the involved vPars monitor is rebooted. This implies that the target virtual partition of the vparload, vparboot, and vparreset commands will not boot until all virtual partitions within the nPartition have been shut down and the vPars monitor is rebooted.

For more information on performing nPartition operations within a virtual partition, see “Performing nPartition Operations”. For more information on using the -R and -H options of the shutdown and reboot commands used in a RFR, see “shutdown and reboot commands”.

For more information, see “Shutting Down or Rebooting the Hard Partition (rebooting the vPars monitor)” and the vPars monitor command “reboot”.

Note: unlike the rp7400/N4000, on a Superdome and other nPartition servers, the first element of the hardware path of the ioscan output is the cell number.

For example, on the rp7400/N4000 the ioscan output shows:

0/0       ba              Local PCI Bus Adapter (782)

However, on a Superdome, the first element of the hardware path is the cell number. So, if the cell number is 4, the ioscan output shows:

4/0/0     ba              Local PCI Bus Adapter (782)

For more information on the nPartition hardware, see the manual HP Systems Partition Guide.

Support Tools. For informaion on which version of the Support Tools package is required with vPars, please see the document Read Before Installing HP-UX Virtual Partitions available as the vPars CD booklet and at http://docs.hp.com/hpux/11i/index.html#Virtual%20Partitions. For information on installation of the Support Tools package, see “Installing and Removing vPars-related Bundles”.

In a vPars environment, if the LPMC (Low Priority Machine Check) monitor of the Support Tools deactivates a processor, it does not automatically replace the failing processor with an iCOD processor. The processor replacement must be performed manually using the icod_modify command. For more information, see the manual titled Instant Capacity on Demand (iCOD) User's Guide for version B.05.00 at http://docs.hp.com.

	CAUTION: CPU Expert Tool is not supported on vPars servers. Using the CPU Expert Tool on vPars servers will give unpredictable results. For complete information on using the Support Tools with vPars, see the Support Tools document: http://docs.hp.com/hpux/onlinedocs/diag/stm/stm_vpar.htm

iCOD (Instant Capacity on Demand) and PPU (Pay Per Use). iCOD allows online activation of iCOD CPUs; PPU allows purchasing CPU time of processors.

Beginning with vPars version A.02.01 and iCOD version B.05.00, iCOD is now supported in a vPars environment; PPU is not yet supported.

For iCOD/PPU versions prior to version B.05.00, vPars can be installed successfully only if all CPUs in the server are activated (in other words, purchased). Likewise, on a vPars server, iCOD/PPU will not load or run.

To determine your current version of iCOD, PPU, or vPars, use the command swlist.

Please see the note “WLM (Workload Manager)” when using WLM, iCOD, and vPars.

Please see the note “Support Tools” for information on iCOD and LPMC_monitor.

For more information on iCOD, see the manual titled Instant Capacity on Demand (iCOD) User's Guide for version B.05.00 at http://docs.hp.com. Also see “Installing and Removing vPars-related Bundles”.

PCI OLAR (On-Line Addition and Replacement)

OLAR for PCI slots works the same on a vPars server as it does on a non-vPars server. However, you can exeucte OLAR functions only on the PCI slots that the virtual partition owns.

MC/ServiceGuard

MC/ServiceGuard is supported with vPars. However, because MC/ServiceGuard is used to guard against hardware failures as well as software failures, its functionality will be reduced if a cluster includes multiple virtual partitions within the same server. Such configurations are not recommended. See the MC/ServiceGuard documentation for more information on running MC/Service Guard with vPars.

Glance and Openview Performance Agent (MeasureWare)

For correct reporting of CPU utilization, you need to run Glance and MeasureWare versions C.03.35.00 or higher.

WLM (Workload Manager). If you have iCOD or PPU software installed, do not use WLM's vPar (virtual partitions) management. Using WLM's vPar management in such an environment may cause an iCOD processor to be automatically enabled without customer authorization. If this situation occurs, please contact your HP representative.

Processor Sets

In the current release of vPars, you cannot specify a hardware path for an unbound CPU. Therefore, to avoid unintentionally removing unbound CPUs from a non-default pset, initially create the partition that will be running Processor Sets using only bound CPUs. Then, when you add or remove an unbound CPU, the unbound CPU will be added to or removed from only the default pset.

Ignite-UX

For information on a "cookbook" for setting up your Ignite-UX server for use with vPars, see “Setting Up the Ignite-UX Server”.

Before using Ignite-UX to install or recover vPars, you may need to update your Ignite server. For more information, see “Updating the Ignite-UX Server”.

When Ignite-UX reports the Total Number of CPUs for a partition, it includes unassigned unbound CPUs in the count. For information on bound and unbound CPUs, see “Bound and Unbound CPUs”.

For example, if you have three virtual partitions, each with one bound CPU, and two unbound CPUs not assigned to any of the partitions, this is a total of five CPUs in the server. Ignite-UX will report three CPUs (one bound and two unbound CPUs) for each partition. However, adding up the numbers results in a total of nine CPUs for the server when there are actually only five physical CPUs.

Ignite-UX Recovery and Expert Recovery

Ignite-UX Recovery via make_net_recovery requires additional steps as noted in “Ignite-UX Network Recovery”.

make_tape_recovery is not supported for vPars servers. You need to use make_net_recovery.

Expert recovery works as documented in the Ignite-UX manual; however, you must account for the vPars differences described in “Expert Recovery”.

Ignite-UX and other Curses Applications. On the virtual console, when using applications that use curses, such as the terminal versions of Ignite-UX and SAM, do not press Ctrl-A to toggle to the console display window of another virtual partition while you are still within the curses application. This is especially applicable when you are using vparboot -I and the Ignite-UX application to install vPars. For more information on curses, see the curses_intro(3X) manpage.

UPS (uninterruptible power supply) software

UPS hardware communicates with UPS software via the serial port. By default, a hard partition has only one serial port. For a vPars hard partition, the serial port can be owned by at most one virtual partition. Therefore, on a vPars hard partition, the UPS can communicate with only the virtual partition that owns the serial port.

Alternately, the HP PowerTrust II-MR UPS product can be configured across virtual partitions using network connections, providing all the virtual partitions reside on the same network.

shutdown and reboot commands. In a virtual partition, the shutdown and reboot commands shutdown and reboot a virtual partition and not the entire hard partition.

Also, if a virtual partition is not set for autoboot using the autoboot attribute (see the vparmodify (1M) manpage), the -r and -R options of the shutdown or reboot commands will only shut down the virtual partition; the virtual partition will not reboot. In other words, the virtual partition will halt when the autoboot attribute is not set. For more information, see the vparmodify (1M) manpage.

For the -R and -r options of the shutdown and reboot commands, the virtual partition will not reboot when there is a pending reboot for reconfiguration (RFR) until all the virtual partitions within the nPartition have been shutdown and the vPars monitor has been rebooted. Also, the requested reconfiguration will not take place until all the virtual partitions within the involved nPartition have been shutdown and the vPars monitor has been rebooted.

Finally, to ensure the vPars database is synchronized before a shutdown or reboot of a partition, run vparstatus before the shutdown or reboot command.

For more information, see “Shutting Down or Rebooting a Virtual Partition” and “Shutting Down or Rebooting the Hard Partition (rebooting the vPars monitor)”.

Real-time clock. The monitor keeps track of the OS time for each virtual partition relative to the real-time clock. The OS time is the time that is changed via the set_parms or date commands.

However, you can change the real-time clock at the BCH prompt. If you change the real-time clock, you need to run the monitor command toddriftreset to reset the drifts relative to the real-time clock. For information on the monitor commands, see “Using Monitor Commands”.

kernel crash dump analyzer

You cannot use a kernel crash dump analyzer on monitor dumps because vPars monitor dumps are structured differently than kernel dumps. For more information on monitor dumps, see “Monitor Dump Analysis Tool”.

System-wide stable storage and the setboot command. On a non-vPars server, the setboot command allows you to read from and write to the system-wide stable storage of non-volatile memory. However, on a vPars server, the setboot command does not affect the stable storage. Instead, it reads from and writes to only the partition database.

For more information see “System-wide Stable Storage and Setboot”.

mkboot and LIF files. The mkboot command allows you to write to files in the LIF area, for example, the AUTO file. While on a vPars server, mkboot can still be used to write to files in the LIF area, the LIF area is not read during the boot of the OS of a virtual partition. Instead, only the information stored in the vPars partition database is read. (Note: the files in the LIF area are still read when the entire server boots).

To simulate the effect of an AUTO file for a virtual partition, use the vPars commands so that the information is saved in the vPars partition database. For more information, see “Simulating the AUTO File on a Virtual Partition”.

/stand file system size

Due to the vPars files that will exist in /stand, you should increase by 50 MB the size of the /stand file system that you normally create.

SCSI Initiator ID

Although you can set the SCSI Initiator ID (the ID of the SCSI controller) and rate at the BCH prompt, on a vPars server, you can also set these values from the UNIX shell of a virtual partition.

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

ioscan output

The ioscan output for vcn and vcs drivers show a value of NO_HW in the S/W State column. This is normal.

intctl command

The intctl command is a HP-UX tool that allows you to manage I/O interrupts among the active processors. However, in a vPars environment you can manage the I/O interrupts only among the bound CPUs. Further, disabling interrupts on a bound CPU does not convert the CPU into an unbound CPU. For more information see the intctl(1M) manpage.