HP Partition Management: nPars, vPars, & Integrity Virtual Machines

Course overview

This course covers hard partioning (nPars) and virtual partitioning (vPars) management along with Integrity Virtual Machines (HP VM) on cell-based HP 9000 and Integrity servers. The 4-day course is 50 percent lecture and 50 percent hands-on labs using HP servers.

Please note: This course includes the content of the course, HP Integrity Virtual Machines, (HB506S).

Prerequisites

• HP-UX System and Network Administration I (H3064S) and HP-UX System and Network Administration II (H3065S) or
• HP-UX for experienced UNIX system administrators (H5875S) or
• equivalent experience

Audience

• Experienced HP-UX system administrators

Ways to save

Course Objectives

• Identify the hardware and software components of HP’s Virtual Server Environment (VSE)
• Configure and manage node partitions (nPars)
• Configure and manage virtual partitions (vpars)
• Configure and manage HP Integrity Virtual Machines
• Use Ignite-UX to install Integrity Virtual Machines and vPars

Benefits to you

• Determine and utilize the appropriate combination of HP Partitioning Continuum technologies that best meet your data center needs
• Learn how to configure, modify, and remove partitions on Integrity and HP 9000 servers
• Increase server flexibility and utilization by knowing how to easily reconfigure and resize partitions
• Learn how to use Integrity VM to set up isolated virtual machines as test environments to reduce the time required to deploy new applications or application revisions
• Gain valuable hands-on experience with installing HP Virtual Machines on a properly configured Integrity server

Next Steps

• HP Global Workload Manager: gWLM (HC719S)
• HP Instant Capacity (HC720S)
• or consider attending the other courses in the HP Virtual Server Environment (VSE) curriculum to learn more about HP-UX virtualization

Course outline

Introducing HP’s Partitioning Continuum

• Partitioning terminology
• HP Virtual Server Environment (VSE)
• Processor-based and cell-based systems
• Server virtualization concepts
• CPU resources
• HP-UX partition management with nPars/vPars

Addressing Hardware

• HP servers supporting the partitioning continuum
• Server maximum configurations
• Partition configuration key point
• HP-UX address types
• HP-UX hardware, slot, and EFI hardware addresses
• Mapping ACPI to LBA
• Addressing tools summary
• Selecting a boot device from EFI

Introduction to Ignite-UX

• What is Ignite-UX?
• Ignite-UX use models
• Interacting with Ignite-UX
• Ignite-UX recovery options

Virtual Partitions (vPars) Preparation and Planning

• vPars concepts
• vPars database
• PA-RISC and Integrity nPar/vPar boot sequences
• vPars installation minimum requirements
• Planning CPU, Memory, and I/O resource allocations for vPars
• vPars in a Mixed HP-UX version environment
• Configuring vPars to use dynamic memory

Administering Node Partitions (nPars)

• What are node partitions?
• Partition planning
• First and Genesis partitions
• Supported nPar configurations
• Interleaved and cell-local memory
• Remote nPar administration
• HP-UX nPar management tools
• parmgr architecture and using parmgr
• nPars commands
• PA-RISC and Integrity nPar boot sequence

Virtual Partitions Management

• Display vPars status
• Find unused resources in a vPars environmet
• Migrate CPUs and Memory between running vPars
• Flexible administrative capability
• vPars - Ignite-UX considerations
• make_net_recovery and make_tape_recovery

Integrity Virtual Machines Overview

• Virtualization concepts, and terminology
• Shared resources Virtual Machines (VM)
• VM host, Virtual Machines, and VM guests
• The Integrity Virtual Machine Manager GUI
• Guest virtual networks and storage devices
• Restricted devices

Preparing the Server for Integrity VM

• Installation Pre-requisites
• Creating Virtual Networks and Storage backing devices

Creating and running Integrity Virtual Machines

• Integrity VM administration, configuration, and VM management
• VM CPU , memory, and I/O allocation
• Accessing a Virtual Machines Console

Managing and Monitoring Virtual Machines• Implementing VLANs

• Accelerated Virtual I/O (AVIO)
• Dynamic Memory
• Clone and migrate Virtual Machines
• Monitor VMs resource utilization
• Serviceguard and HP Integrity VM

Creating Virtual Partitions

• vPars commands
• Interacting with the vPars Monitor
• Setting Integrity environment variables to
allow booting in a vPars environment
• Managing and accessing the vPars Console