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Partitioning

A hardware partition corresponds roughly to a single, standalone system. Each HP 9000 rp7440 Server
can be subdivided into two partitions, each containing one cell that has minimal shared resources with
the other cell (partition). Special programmable hardware in the cells defines the boundaries of a
partition in such a way that the isolation is enforced from the actions of other partitions. Each partition
runs its own independent instance of the operating system (HP UX 11i v1, v2 and v3) . Applications
cannot span partitions since each partition runs its own instance of the OS, essentially functioning as a
stand alone server. However, different partitions may be executing the same or different revisions of an
operating system, or they may be executing different operating systems altogether, with OS availability.

Each partition has its own independent CPUs, memory and I/O resources consisting of the resources of
the cells that make up the partition. Resources may be removed from one partition and added to another
without having to physically manipulate the hardware just by using commands that are part of the System
Management interface. With a future release of HP UX, using the related capabilities of dynamic
reconfiguration (e.g. on line addition, on line removal), new resources may be added to a partition and
failed modules may be removed and replaced while the partition continues in operation.

Partitioning the resources of the complex in this way makes it easy to run multiple application
environments on the same physical system; you can allocate physical resources and tune the operating
system running on each partition depending on the needs of the application (or the most important
application) you intend to run on it. Alternatively, you can configure the HP 9000 rp7440 Server as a
single partition, allowing all the resources to be focused on a single set of tasks, for example a large
online transaction processing application.

You can increase or reduce the processing power of a partition by adding or deleting cells (at this
release, you must shut down the operating system running on the affected partition(s) before moving
cells, and before configuration changes will take effect). Though the OS might include commands for
some configuration tasks, HP recommends you use the Partition Manager (parmgr) to configure
partitions.

The current release of HP 9000 rp7440 Server supports hardware partitioning. Hardware based
partition configuration changes may require a reboot of the partition depending upon the configuration
change. The reboot of the partition only affects the partition that is being reconfigured. The other
partition defined in the chassis is not affected and will continue to execute without interruption. In a
future HP UX release, dynamic hard partitions will be supported. Dynamic partitions imply that partition
configuration changes do not require a reboot of the partition.

The HP 9000 rp7440 Server can be divided into two independent hardware partitions. In a partitioned
configuration, system resources such as cell boards, I/O slots, core I/O, and disks, are evenly split
between the two partitions (the removable media device is dedicated to partition 1). There is no flexibility
to otherwise divide these components. For example, it is not possible to include 12 I/O slots in partition
0 and 4 I/O slots in partition 1; the split must be even.

The table below summarizes the resource split between hardware partitions.

Cells

Cells (required)

I/O slots

Core I/O

Core I/O (required)

Disk/Media Bays

Partition 0

Cell 0

2/0

Partition 1

Cell 1