Four server virtualization partitions for HP-UX technology

HP was the first to introduce server virtualization technology to Unix servers. As early as 2001, when HP released N-series and L-series servers, vPar partitioning became an important virtualization technology, and the original HP9000 SuperDome was released. The nPar physical partition and vPar partition are the main server consolidation technologies. After more than 10 years of development, the virtualization technology on the HP-UX platform has developed into an integrated operation environment that integrates virtualization, unified management, dynamic resource management and cloud services. The following is divided into several parts for a brief introduction.

HP-UX supports partition technology that is very complete, with partition technology supported by the server:

physical partition nPar, virtual (hardware) partition vPar, virtual machine VM, resource partition Container These different types of partitioning technologies have their own outstanding advantages in terms of security isolation, processing capacity, resource dynamic allocation, availability, etc., which can meet various application workloads of different scales, extremely reliable reliability, and security isolation. . The following are some conceptual explanations.

First, the physical partition nPar

nPar is a partitioning technology for the high-end Integrity series and HP9000 series servers, has been applied for more than 10 years. It is characterized by partitioning the processor unit board as a resource unit, taking the HP SuperDome server as an example (below), which can be configured with up to 16 processor unit boards, each of which contains 4 dual-core Itanium processors and a certain Capacity of memory.

Therefore, an nPar needs to contain at least one such processor unit board, and can contain up to all 16 unit boards. In the following figure, for example, 16 units are configured as four nPar partitions. Each partition can run its own operating system independently, so multiple different types or versions of operating systems can be mixed and run on a large server.

Technical Features of nPar

The main feature of nPar is that it has the strongest fault isolation capability, and hardware isolation between partitions. Therefore, no problem occurs in a partition regardless of any faults. Applications running in other partitions, hardware maintenance, software upgrades, etc. for faulty partitions will not disturb the operation of other normal partitions, and the stability is extremely strong.

In addition, all CPU, memory, and I/O resources of the nPar are physical resources. They are configured through the server firmware. There is no system overhead in operation, and the expansion capability is large, which can maintain the highest performance.

Based on the above characteristics, nPars are often used by enterprises to run important core applications such as core databases and application services.

Second, virtual partition vPar

Virtual partition vPar is also called logical partition, its structure is shown in the figure below. The vPar can be built on a physical server or a physical partition nPar. There is a hardware mapping layer called vPar Monitor on the physical server or nPar. The vPar Monitor can create and host multiple vPars, which are responsible for the underlying CPU, memory, and I/O devices. Each shadow is mapped to each vPar, and each vPar can only access its corresponding physical resource.

Technical Features of vPar

The CPU, memory, and I/O resources of each vPar are exclusive physical resources, so the essence is still the hardware partition, so the performance is equivalent to the physical partition. The performance consumption of virtualization is basically negligible. vPar's extensibility can range from a CPU core to the entire server or nPar.

vPar can provide fault isolation for OS and application software and some hardware, and also has high stability. In practice It is often used as a major enterprise application deployment platform, and because vPars have the ability to dynamically schedule processors and memory resources on the fly, it also brings great benefits for improving resource utilization.

What is vPar 6.x?

In September 2011, HP released vPar 6.0, and in March 2012, HP released a new version of vPar vPar 6.1.vPar 6.x The latest vPar version. Prior to version 6.0, vPars were only available on the mid- to high-end Integrity and HP9000 series of cell board architectures, and the release of 6.x extended this popular partitioning technology to all Integrity series server platforms, which can support from rx2800. , BL860c i2/BL870c i2/BL890c i2, until SuperDome 2's full range of Integrity servers, greatly expanded the vPar support platform.

Secondly, vPar 6.x adds the ability to share virtual I/O devices based on the original vPar support for exclusive physical I/O devices. Therefore, vPars created by vPar 6.x can share one. Physical I/O devices such as network cards and fiber cards greatly increase flexibility. vPar 6.x can share the same I/O resource pool with HP VMs (virtual machines), and both physical I/O and virtual I/O devices can be used in the same vPar.