Virtual Partitions are viewed as separate systems even though you may have several instances of HP-UX running on the same computer. When you invoke SAM in a Virtual Partition you can manage the resources of that Virtual Partition. Other Virtual Partitions, even those running on the same server, are viewed as remote systems.
In the upcoming sections we'll run some tasks in SAM in Virtual Partitions to show that this is identical to running these tasks on separate systems. We'll also show an example of setting up and running System Configuration Repository (SCR) on a vPar. SCR records a lot of useful information about your system. With multiple instances of HP-UX running on one computer you have more configuration information to keep track of and SCR helps with this data management.
There is substantial background information on SAM and ServiceControl Manager (SCM) in the overview at the end of this chapter. SCM allows you to perform tasks on multiple systems rather than one at a time. With mulitple instances of HP-UX running on one computer, this may save you time in performing your management tasks.
