3.2 Obtaining the Virtual Partitions Software

3.2 Obtaining the Virtual Partitions Software

The Virtual Partitions product (T1335AC) is a purchasable product and comes on CD. Details of how to purchase the product online as well as a run-down of features and benefits can be found at http://software.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=T1335AC.

We use our Superdome nPar created in Chapter 2 as a basis for creating a number of vPars. We need to analyze the configuration in order to establish how many vPars we can actually configure, based on the available hardware in the nPar.

3.3 Setting Up an Ignite -UX Server to Support Virtual Partitions

On our first Virtual Partition, we can utilize the existing HP-UX Operating System. On subsequent Virtual Partitions, we need to have a means of installing HP-UX onto the intended boot disks. This may be an Ignite-UX Server (hence the need for a LAN card in our configuration) that contains the full Operating System software, patches, the vPar bundle, and any associated applications (see Chapter 13, Installing Software with Software Distributor and Ignite-UX). The only issue with setting up an Ignite-UX Server is the Ignite-UX kernel itself. The WINSTALL file supplied by newer versions of Ignite-UX is perfectly vPar-enabled . However, if our version of Ignite-UX on the Ignite server is B.3.4.XX (September 2001), B.3.5.XX (December 2001), or B.3.6.XX (Match 2002), we need to obtain the new version of the /opt/ignite/boot/WINSTALL file. A script called WINSTALL_script , located under the root directory of the CD in a sub-directory called vParsWINSTALL , will copy the WINSTALL file to the correct location on the Ignite-UX server.

root@hpeos003[]

bdf /cdrom

Filesystem          kbytes    used   avail %used Mounted on

/dev/dsk/c2t2d0     112014  112014       0  100% /cdrom

root@hpeos003[] ll /cdrom/vParsWINSTALL/

total 101289984

-r-xr-xr-x   1 4294967295 4294967295 16935056 May 20  2002 WINSTALL.Dec01

-r-xr-xr-x   1 4294967295 4294967295 17050784 May 20  2002 WINSTALL.Mar02

-r-xr-xr-x   1 4294967295 4294967295 16644896 May 20  2002 WINSTALL.Sep01

-r-xr-xr-x   1 4294967295 4294967295    9711 May 20  2002 WINSTALL_script

root@hpeos003[]

Once you locate the script, simply run it and the new WINSTALL file will prompt you for any additional information it needs.

3.4 Planning Your Virtual Partitions

One of the first tasks with Virtual Partitions is to establish how much hardware you have in your current non Virtual Partition server. This can be a process of running various ioscan commands and probably drawing a schematic diagram of what hardware you have available. Here is a diagram of what we have in our Superdome nPar in Figure 3-2.

Drawing this schematic diagram is a good exercise, as we need to plan the configuration VERY carefully . When you have lots more hardware, sometimes it becomes obvious which divisions to make when creating multiple vPars; e.g., with a 2- cell partition, it might be obvious to create 2 vPars using CPUs from a specific cells to be members of a particular vPar. The unused ( unbound ) CPUs could float between either vPar, although it would be better for performance to localize CPU/memory IO to within a single cell.

What I need to do is assign LBAs (specific interface cards) to individual vPars. I need to remember to create in each vPar enough hardware to support a basic server:

• At least 1 CPU

• The minimum amount of memory to support HP-UX (1GB per CPU works better)

• IO capability to support a boot device

• A LAN card (probably) to support networking

I have spent some time considering how to divide up this nPar. The solution I have come up with is to create two vPars (I currently don't have enough disks to configure any more vPars). I have split the 12-slot IO cardcage and RAM into separate chunks just to allow us to visualize each vPar as a separate server. Here's my plan, see Figure 3-3.

We can summarize the hardware details of each Virtual Partition as follows :

1. vPar0

   - Physical Memory: 2GB

   - Total Number of CPU: 2

   • Total number of Bound CPU: 1 (2/10)

   • Total Number of Unbound CPU: 1

   - Assigned LBA:

   • 2/0/0

   • 2/0/1

   • 2/0/2

   • 2/0/3

   • 2/0/10

   • 2/0/11

   • 2/0/12

   • 2/0/14

   - Boot device: 2/0/1/0/0.0.0

   - Alternate Boot device: 2/0/11/0/0.3.0

2. vPar0

   - Physical Memory: 2GB

   - Total Number of CPU: 2

   • Total number of Bound CPU: 1 (2/12)

   • Total Number of Unbound CPU: 1

   - Assigned LBA:

   • 2/0/4

   • 2/0/6

   • 2/0/9

   • 2/0/8

   - Boot device: 2/0/4/0/0.8.0

Once our plan has been finalized, we can start to consider creating the vPars themselves .