The HP Virtual Server Environment (VSE) allows enterprises to achieve a greater return on their IT investment by optimizing server resource utilization in real-time based on business priorities. For information on HP's virtualization strategy, see what's new with VSE. At the heart of Virtual Server Environment is the intelligent policy engine, HP-UX Workload Manager (HP-UX WLM), which orchestrates the virtual server resources. HP-UX WLM enables a virtual HP-UX server to automatically grow and shrink based on the service-level objectives (SLOs) for each application it hosts. HP-UX WLM assesses resource usage in real time, and then advises and acts in accordance with the defined SLOs and business priorities. To create a VSE, HP-UX WLM is tightly integrated with HP's server virtualization offerings, such as resource management groups, partitions, clustering, and utility pricing resources. The HP Virtual Server Environment offers several forms of partitioning:- Hard partitions-These partitions are implemented and isolated through hardware. The first form of hard partitions is a complete server, which can be clustered in an HP Serviceguard high availability cluster. Another form of hard partitions is known as nPartitions, which are portions of a single server. Each hard partition runs its own instance of HP-UX. Isolation provided by nPartitions guarantees that an application running in one partition is not affected by an application or hardware failure in another.
- Virtual partitions-These partitions are implemented and isolated through software, with each virtual partition running its own instance of the HP-UX operating system. HP virtual partitions offer unique granularity for partitioning servers. You can create a virtual partition consisting of one or more cores, and you can use virtual partitions within hard partitions. Virtual partitions provide complete software isolation between partitions.
- Virtual machines-These partitions, much like virtual partitions, are created with software. However, they emulate generic servers, and therefore can offer sub-core and shared I/O capabilities. Each virtual machine runs its own operating system. HP Integrity Virtual Machines can be used within hard partitions.
- Resource partitions-HP Process Resource Manager (PRM), managing processor sets and Fair Share Scheduler (FSS) groups, provides resource partitions. These partitions enable you to partition system resources (including memory and disk bandwidth) within a single instance of HP-UX and consolidate multiple workloads within that instance. You can use these partitions within (but not across) hard partitions and virtual partitions.
You can use WLM to manage resource partitions (WLM creates and manages its own PRM configuration, but PRM must be installed on the same system). You can also use WLM across hard partitions and virtual partitions, automatically moving cores among partitions based on the SLOs in the partitions. (Given the physical nature of hard partitions, the "movement" of cores among partitions is achieved by deactivating a core on one nPartition, and then activating a core on another.)
You can use WLM to manage resources within a virtual machine. On an Integrity VM host, you can use WLM to manage resources across partitions; within an Integrity VM guest, you can use WLM to manage the HP-UX resources but not using Instant Capacity, Pay per use (PPU), or virtual partition integration. In either case, WLM runs as an independent instance.
For information on how HP uses Virtual Server Environments, see the paper HPshopping.com expands and innovates while trimming costs and consolidating IT. In addition, see the VSE fact sheet or visit the VSE web site. |
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