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Introduction
Integrity servers help to meet your business needs by allowing you to consolidate multiple
applications onto a single server using a combination of HP-UX 11i Partitioning Continuum and
Virtual Server Environment (VSE) technologies. The partitioning techniques, which you can use
alone or in combination, include hard partitions, virtual partitions, virtual machines, and resource
partitions.
" Hard partitions (nPartitions) offer electrical isolation and cell board granularity, allowing you
to service one partition while others are online.
" Virtual partitions (vPars) are separate operating system instances on the same nPartition or
server, with O/S, application, and resource isolation. HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions enable you to
dynamically move CPU power between vPars as workload requirements change. vPars also
offers single CPU core granularity.
" Virtual machines have their own separate operating system instances (guests), on the same
nPartition or server, with different OS versions, applications, and users, in a fully isolated
environment. HP Integrity Virtual Machines software provides shared CPU (with sub-CPU
granularity), shared I/O, and dynamic CPU resource allocation based on demand and
entitlement.
" Resource partitions allocate resources to specific applications and users within an operating
system. They offer fully dynamic allocation of resources, including CPU or sub-CPU and percent
memory granularity.
HP partitioning is regularly used in IT consolidation to isolate production environments from test and
development environments. HP partitioning and VSE can:
" Improve your RoIT through optimized server utilization with minimal overhead.
" Increase server flexibility through easy resizing of partitions.
" Reduce risks by offering a variety of isolation choices, including hard partitions, virtual partitions,
virtual machines, and resource partitions.
" Improve service levels, such as application response time, through the intelligent policy engine
(HP-UX Global Workload Manager), which provides automatic provisioning of resources based
on predefined service level objectives.
Using Integrity Virtual Machines for Hardware
Consolidation
Virtual machines share hardware while providing complete operating system instance isolation, so
the Integrity Virtual Machines (Integrity VM) product is the perfect solution for hardware
consolidation. Using virtualization, you can lower overall hardware costs by:
" Reducing the complexity and number of hardware components required to run multiple operating
system (OS) instances.
" Increasing hardware utilization.