IBM POWER6™ processor-based servers are designed to allow you to get the most out of your IT investment. The combination of leadership performance, energy efficiency, flexible virtualization features and RAS features designed to maximize application availability can enable you to take back control of your IT infrastructure.
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PowerVM
Virtualization is a topic on almost every IT manager's agenda. And why not – after all, you can use virtualization to reduce budget, to help make your data centers green, and to help manage the evolution of those data centers through all kinds of changes. IBM PowerVM™ (formerly Advanced Power Virtualization or APV) is designed to enable you to get more out of virtualization.
The granularity and scalability of PowerVM help you maximize resource utilization and minimize hardware, software, and management costs and, because higher utilization means less hardware, minimize energy usage. Perhaps the most important characteristic of PowerVM is that it supports the entire Power Systems product line. This increases your flexibility to easily deal with the ever changing environment that so many data centers face today. PowerVM improves your bottom line by reducing your budget and improves your management effectiveness at the same time.
Only PowerVM allows you to allocate as little as 1/10 of a processor or as much as 64 processors to a single partition. Only PowerVM allows you to either dedicate or share processor and I/O resources between partitions and dynamically change the amount of resource available to those partitions. And only PowerVM with Live Partition Mobility allows you to move partitions running your large (>4 processor), mission critical UNIX® workloads from one system to another without interrupting your production operations.
Even if your environment is so volatile that you are reconfiguring your data centers every week, PowerVM is designed to provide the virtualization support you need. You define your logical partition and the amount of processor and I/O required, and that definition is good no matter whether you are running the workload on a 2-processor IBM BladeCenter® JS12 Express, BladeCenter or a 64-processor IBM Power 595. So when you reconfigure the data center and have to move workloads between systems, you don't have to change virtualization technologies; you don't have to change partition definitions. You just reconfigure. And if you are running on POWER6 processor-based systems, you can use Live Partition Mobility so that you don't have to stop and restart applications as you do the reconfiguration. Now that is the flexibility you need to run a 21st century data center.
The detail feature comparisons between PowerVM and virtualization technologies offered by HP, Sun, and x86 vendors is in the tables below. They define the differences that lead to the tremendous advantage of PowerVM
| Virtualization Capability | IBM PowerVM | HP nPartitions | HP vPars | HP IVM | Business Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OS Supported | IBM AIX, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise | HP-UX, HP Open VMS I64 8.2-1 and 8.3, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise [5] | HP-UX12 | HP-UX, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise and Data Center, Red Hat Enterprise Linux [25] | Broad OS support enables consolidation of a wide range of applications. |
| Partition Scalability | Up to all CPUs on machine and 2 TB of memory | Dependent upon OS running in nPartition (maximums range from 8 cores to all cores, 96GB to all of memory, 1 I/O chassis to all I/O chassis) [6] | Up to size of nPartition (currently limited to 8 cells) [13] [14] | Up to 4 CPUs (max) [25] and 1 CPU (recommended) [26] [27] and 64 GB of memory [25] | Provide service to larger applications |
| Servers Supported | Entire current Power Systems line of servers | HP 9000 and HP Integrity High End and Mid Range Servers. [7] Entry level servers not supported. | HP 9000 and HP Integrity High End and Mid Range Servers. [15] Entry level servers are not supported. | HP Integrity Servers. [28] HP PA-9000 servers are not supported. | Lowers management cost because of consistency of management practice. Improves reaction time to change since applications can be moved without replanning partition configurations. |
| Move/add/remove active [4] (running a workload) resources between/to/from active partitions without a reboot | Yes (CPU, Memory, and I/O) | No8. [9] | Limited. All CPU resources can be added/moved/removed except one boot processor/partition. [16] Memory designated as "float" can be added/removed. Memory designated as "base" can be added, but not removed. [17] 1/4 to 1/2 memory/partition must be designated as "base." [18] I/O resources cannot be added or removed. [19] | Limited. All CPU [29] and Memory [30] resources can be added / moved / removed. Storage devices can be added / moved / removed. [30] Virtual Storage Adapters can only be added/moved/removed if the virtual machine is powered off. [30] Virtual Network Adapters can only be removed when the virtual machine is powered off. [30] In order to modify the logical volumes attached to a virtual machine, the virtual machine must be powered off. [31] | Minimize disruption from changes in demand. |
| Share Processing Resources between partitions | Yes, up to 10 partitions/CPU | No10 | No20 | Yes, up to 20 partitions/CPU [32] | Lowers cost because of higher resource utilization |
| Dynamically allocate processing resources between partitions | Yes, 1/100th of a processor or more evaluated and dynamically allocable every 10 milliseconds | No [10] | No [21] | Yes [33] | Improves service because resources are autonomically moved to meet service demand. |
| Dedicate Processing Resources to a partition | Yes, as little as 1 CPU / partition and up to all processors in the machine | Yes, at least one cell board (minimum of 4 sockets) / partition [11] | Yes, as little as 1 CPU / partition23 and up to all processors in the nPartition. [2] Only 8 vPars are allowed per nPartition. [24] | No34 | Guarantee service to the most important applications |
| Share I/O Resources between partitions | Yes | No [9] | No [23] | Yes. However, IVM's hardware agnostic implementation requires all I/O operations to pass through the Integrity VM storage subsystem. [35] In addition, all I/O operations go through a single IVM storage subsystem [36] and the VM guests do not support multipathing. [35] | Lower cost because of higher resource utilization. |
| Dedicate I/O Resources to a partition | Yes, as little as 1 dedicated I/O adapter slot / partition and up to all I/O slots in the machine | Yes, at least one cell board (all I/O attached to cell) / partition [11] | Yes, as little as 1 dedicated I/O adapter slot / partition [22] and up to all I/O slots in the nPartition [13] Only 8 vPars are allowed per nPartition. [24] | Yes, as little as 1 dedicated device / partition. [37] However, IVM's hardware agnostic implementation requires all operations to pass through the Integrity VM storage subsystem. [35] | Guarantee service to the most important applications |
| Dedicate Memory Resources to a partition | Yes, as little as 16MB of RAM and up to 2 TB | Yes, at least one cell board (minimum of 16-32 DIMMs) [11] | Yes, as little as 64MB of RAM [22] and up to all available memory in the nPartition [13] Only 8 vPars are allowed per nPartition. [24] | Yes, as little as 512 MB of RAM and upto 64 GB of memory. [24] Memory is allocated in 64 MB chunks. [38] | Guarantee service to the most important applications |
| Virtualization Capability | IBM PowerVM | Sun Dynamic Domains | Sun Logical Domains | Business Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OS Supported | IBM AIX, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise | Sun Solaris 1039 | Sun Solaris 1047 | Broad OS support enables consolidation of a wide range of applications. |
| Partition Scalability | Up to all 64 CPUs on machine and 2 TB of memory | Up to all 64 CPUs on machine and 2 TB of memory [40] | Up to 8 CPUs on machine and 64 GB of memory [48] | Provide service to larger applications |
| Servers Supported | Entire current Power Servers line [*] | SUN SPARC Enterprise High End and Mid Range Servers. [41] Entry level servers not supported. | SUN SPARC Enterprise Low End Servers. [49] High End and Mid Range servers not supported. | Lowers management cost because of consistency of management practice. Improves reaction time to change since applications can be moved without replanning partition configurations. |
| Move/add/remove active (running a workload) resources between/to/from active partitions without a reboot | Yes (CPU, Memory, and I/O) | Limited. DR operations are performed at a granularity of 1/4 of a motherboard. [42] Motherboards containing kernel memory require an active partition to be suspended to perform a move/remove. [43] Running processes must manually be unbound from a processor before performing a move/remove operation on the 1/4 motherboard the processor is attached to. [44] | Limited. CPU dynamic reconfiguration is disabled on all domains that contain a cryptographic unit. [50] Memory and I/O reconfiguration require a reboot and only one domain may have outstanding memory or I/O reconfiguration requests before a reboot must occur. [51] | Minimize disruption from changes in demand. |
| Share Processing Resources between partitions | Yes, up to 10 partitions/CPU | No [45] | Yes, up to 4 (UltraSPARC T1-based systems) or 8 (UltraSPARC T2-based systems) partitions / CPU. [52] | Lowers cost because of higher resource utilization |
| Dynamically allocate processing resources between partitions | Yes, 1/100th of a processor or more evaluated and dynamically allocable every 10 milliseconds | No [45] | No. Virtual CPUs are tied to specific physical CPU threads. [53] | Improves service because resources are autonomically moved to meet service demand. |
| Dedicate Processing Resources to a partition | Yes, as little as 1 CPU / partition and up to all processors in the machine | Yes, at least 1/4 of a motherboard (1 processor, 8 DIMMs, and 1/4 of I/O attached to the board) / partition [46] | Yes, as little as 1 CPU / partition and up to all processors in the machine [54] | Guarantee service to the most important applications |
| Share I/O Resources between partitions | Yes | No [45] | Yes [55] | Lower cost because of higher resource utilization. |
| Dedicate I/O Resources to a partition | Yes, as little as 1 dedicated I/O adapter slot / partition and up to all I/O slots in the machine | Yes, at least 1/4 of a motherboard (1 processor, 8 DIMMs, and 1/4 of I/O attached to the board) / partition [46] | Limited. For UltraSPARC T1-based systems, only one partition outside the control domain can have I/O dedicated to it. [56] | Guarantee service to the most important applications |
| Dedicate Memory Resources to a partition | Yes, as little as 16MB of RAM and up to 2 TB | Yes, at least 1/4 of a motherboard (1 processor, 8 DIMMs, and 1/4 of I/O attached to the board) / partition [46] | Yes, as little as 8KB of RAM and up to 64 GB57 | Guarantee service to the most important applications |
| Virtualization capability | IBM PowerVM | VMware Infrastructure [3] Enterprise on x86 | Business Benefit of APV |
|---|---|---|---|
| Partition scalability | 64 cores, 2 TB RAM | 4 cores,16 GB RAM [1] | Helps improve TCO from consolidating more workloads |
| System scalability | 64 cores, 2 TB RAM | 32 cores, 64 GB RAM | |
| Dynamic Logical Partitioning | Yes | VM reboot [2] | Adapt to changes without downtime |
| Security/fault isolation | CAPP/EAL 4+ | CAPP/EAL 2 [3] | Secured environment for mission critical applications |
| Support for Shared Processors | Yes | Higher server utilization and consolidation ratios | |
| Support for dedicated I/O | Yes | No [4] | Superior performance for I/O intensive workloads |
| Support for Shared I/O | Yes | Yes | Share a resource that is typically underutilized |
| Capacity on Demand integration | Reserve CoD | No [1] | Add capacity when/where needed, turn it off when not required |
| Partitions per CPU | 10 | 8 [1] | Management flexibility |
| Partitioning Granularity | 1/100th of a core, 16 MB of RAM, fraction of an I/O adapter | Smaller granularity prevents over allocating resources in a sub-optimal manner to workloads | |
| Support for Live Partition Mobility | Yes | Yes | Decrease downtime in your enterprise |
| Linux OS Support | Yes | Yes |
HP nPartition notes
5 From nPartition Administrator's Guide, see Table 1-1 "nPartition Operating System Support" http://docs.hp.com/en/5991-1247B/5991-1247B.pdf HP Part Number: 5991-1247B Published: February 2007 Edition: First Edition
6 From nPartition Administrator's Guide, see Table 3-1 "Operating System Hardware Requirements" http://docs.hp.com/en/5991-1247B/5991-1247B.pdf HP Part Number: 5991-1247B Published: February 2007 Edition: First Edition
7 From nPartition Administrator's Guide, see Table 1-2 "HP Servers Supporting nPartitions" http://docs.hp.com/en/5991-1247B/5991-1247B.pdf HP Part Number: 5991-1247B Published: February 2007 Edition: First Edition
8 From HP-UX 11i v3 Dynamic nPartitions - Features and Configuration Recommendations "Cells that are assigned to an nPartition and have booted to form an nPartition are active cells" http://docs.hp.com/en/10907/dynamic_nPars_WP.pdf 4AA0-7690ENW Published: October 2006
9 From nPartition Administrator's Guide "You must perform a reboot for reconfig of a modified nPartition after adding cells to it" and "You must immediately perform a reboot of an nPartition when you have removed an active cell from the nPartition." http://docs.hp.com/en/5991-1247B/5991-1247B.pdf HP Part Number: 5991-1247B Published: February 2007 Edition: First Edition
10 From HP Partitioning Continuum for HP-UX11i on HP 9000 and HP Integrity Servers "Because each nPar has its own CPU, memory, and I/O" http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/downloads/5982-9141EN.pdf 5982-9141EN, Rev. 1 February 2006
11 From nPartition Administrator's Guide, "Either one or two cells. Each cell has up to four processor sockets and up to 16 DIMMs" and "The Superdome 64-way/128-way server is a tightly interconnected dual-cabinet server that has from 4 to 16 cells, each with four processor sockets and up to 32 DIMMs." and "An nPartition includes one or more cells assigned to it (with processors and memory) and all I/O chassis connected to those cells." http://docs.hp.com/en/5991-1247B/5991-1247B.pdf HP Part Number: 5991-1247B Published: February 2007 Edition: First Edition
HP vPar Notes
12 From page 18 of HP-UX Virtual Partitions Administrator's Guide "vPars is a Virtual Partitions product that enables you to run multiple instances of HP-UX simultaneously on one hard partition by dividing that hard partition further into virtual partitions." http://docs.hp.com/en/T1335-90078/T1335-90078.pdf Manufacturing Part Number: T1335-90078 September 2007 Edition 13
13 From page 301 of HP-UX Virtual Partitions Administrator's Guide "Virtual Partitions exist within an nPartition, but they cannot span across nPartitions." http://docs.hp.com/en/T1335-90078/T1335-90078.pdf Manufacturing Part Number: T1335-90078 September 2007 Edition 13
14 From HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions (vPars) - Worldwide QuickSpecs "Each virtual partition can be supported in an nPartition with a meximum of 8 cells" http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12714_div/12714_div.HTML DA-12714 - Worldwide - Version 2 - June 5, 2007
15 From HP-UX Virtual Partitions Ordering and Configuration Guide, see Table 4-4 "Server Support for vPars Releases" http://docs.hp.com/en/1705/oc.pdf Published: September 2007 Edition: Version 07.09.17
16 From page 217 of HP-UX Virtual Partitions Administrator's Guide "These are all the other CPUs, because all CPUs, except the boot processor of each virtual partition can be dynamically migrated." http://docs.hp.com/en/T1335-90078/T1335-90078.pdf Manufacturing Part Number: T1335-90078 September 2007 Edition 13
17 From page 195 of HP-UX Virtual Partitions Administrator's Guide "Base memory cannot be deleted from a virtual partition when a virtual partition is up. When a virtual partition is up, base memory can only be added to a virtual partition. To delete base memory, the target virtual partition must be down." and from page 196 "Float memory can be added to as well as deleted from a virtual partition while the virtual partition is up or down." http://docs.hp.com/en/T1335-90078/T1335-90078.pdf Manufacturing Part Number: T1335-90078 September 2007 Edition 13
18 From page 367 of HP-UX Virtual Partitions Administrator's Guide, see Table F-1 Minimum Base Memory Requirements http://docs.hp.com/en/T1335-90078/T1335-90078.pdf Manufacturing Part Number: T1335-90078 September 2007 Edition 13
19 From HP-UX Virtual Partitions Administrator's Guide, p. 47, Table 2-4 Dynamic Migration "Dynamic I/O Migration - No" http://docs.hp.com/en/T1335-90078/T1335-90078.pdf Manufacturing Part Number: T1335-90078 September 2007 Edition 13
20 From page 20 of HP-UX Virtual Partitions Administrator's Guide "A virtual partition uses only the cores and memory that you assign to it; cores are not time-sliced across virtual partitions." http://docs.hp.com/en/T1335-90078/T1335-90078.pdf Manufacturing Part Number: T1335-90078 September 2007 Edition 13
21 From page 32 of HP-UX Virtual Partitions Administrator's Guide "Once a virtual partition is launched, the Monitor transfers ownership of the hardware to the virtual partitions. At that point, the Monitor is not involved in accessing I/O hardware, physical memory, or process to processor cycles: the individual HP-UX instances have complete ownership of their respective hardware resources." http://docs.hp.com/en/T1335-90078/T1335-90078.pdf Manufacturing Part Number: T1335-90078 September 2007 Edition 13
22 From HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions (vPars) - Worldwide QuickSpecs "Resource granularities: processor core, 64 MB memory, I/O slot" http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12714_div/12714_div.HTML DA-12714 - Worldwide - Version 2 - June 5, 2007
23 From Booting, Installing, Recovery, and Sharing in a vPars Environment from DVD/CDROM/TAPE/Network Version 2.0 11/05/2005 "The concept of "sharing" needs to be clarified for the purposes of this document. Within a vPars environment, I/O, including CD/DVDs and Tape drives, may not be shared internally across vpars. This means that I/O is assigned to one and only one vpar and other vpars can not see or access it through any internal means, such as the vPars software." http://docs.hp.com/en/5760/vPars_DVD_TAPE_NET_Usage_V2.pdf Version 2.0 11/05/05
24 From HP-UX 11i Virtual Partitions (vPars) - Worldwide QuickSpecs "There can be a maximum of 8 virtual partitions per nPartition" http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12714_div/12714_div.HTML DA-12714 - Worldwide - Version 2 - June 5, 2007
IVM Notes
25 From HP Integrity Virtual Machines (Integrity VM) version 3.0 - Worldwide QuickSpecs "Currently supports the following guest OSs: HP-UX 11i v2 and v3, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise and Datacenter SP1 and SP2 for 64 bit Itanium-based systems, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 4" and "Each virtual machine is tuned for up to four virtual CPUs" and "512 MB - 64 GB memory per Virtual Machine" http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12715_div/12715_div.HTML DA-12715 - Worldwide - Version 3 - July 2, 2007
26 From Best Practices for Using Integrity Virtual Machines, p. 6 "Uniprocessor Virtual Machines are More Efficient than Virtual SMPs" http://docs.hp.com/en/9983/BestPractices2.2.pdf 4AA1-1168ENW Rev 2.2, 3/2007
27 From Top Ten Tips for Using Integrity Virtual Machines, p. 7 "#9 - Set Entitlements Conservatively ... In general, you should use the minimum or default entitlements until one or more of the VMs are not receiving adequate CPU resources for their workloads." http://docs.hp.com/en/9985/TopTenTips2.5.pdf 4AA1-1169ENW Rev 3.0, 8/2007
28 From Introduction to Integrity Virtual Machines "Support of low to high-end HP Integrity servers and blades: ... And future Integrity servers and blades." http://docs.hp.com/en/9987/Intro_VM_2.1.pdf 4AA1-1167ENW Rev 3.0, 8/2007
29 From HP Partitioning Continuum for HP-UX 11i on HP 9000 and HP Integrity servers, p. 35 "CPU resources can be added to or removed from a partition without rebooting the partition. (Dot in Virtual Machines Column)" http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/downloads/5982-9141EN.pdf 5982-9141EN, Rev. 1 February 2006
30 From HP Integrity Virtual Machines A.03.00 Installation, Configuration, and Administration, p. 120 "Dynamic Memory is an optional feature of Integrity VM that allows you to change the amount of physical memory in use by a virtual machine without rebooting the virtual machine. In this release of Integrity VM, dynamic memory is available on HP-UX guests only." and p. 32 "You can modify storage devices while the virtual machine is running. It is not necessary to restart the virtual machine; however, it may be necessary to rescan for devices on the virtual machine." and p. 72 "Using these commands, the VM Host administrator dynamically adds, deletes, and modifies storage devices on virtual machines." and p. 93 "Virtual storage devices can be added or attached while the virtual machine is powered on or off. A new virtual storage adapter can be added only when the virtual machine is off." and p. 94 "Integrity VM storage devices can be deleted or detached while the virtual machine is powered on or off. An Integrity VM storage adapter can only be removed when the virtual machine is off." and p. 106 "To remove a VNIC from a virtual machine's configuration, first stop the guest using the hpvmstop command. Then use the -d option to the hpvmmodify command." http://docs.hp.com/en/T2767-90067/index.html HP Part Number: T2767-90067 Published: April 2007, Edition 3
31 From Best Practices for Using Integrity Virtual Machines "Logical volumes ... are easy to extend, import, or export ... provided the VM using those logical volumes has been shut down and powered off." http://docs.hp.com/en/9983/BestPractices2.2.pdf 4AA1-1168ENW Rev 2.2, 3/2007
32 From HP Partitioning Continuum for HP-UX 11i on HP 9000 and HP Integrity servers, p. 8 "Granularity: Integrity VM can be configured with as little as 5% of one CPU" http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/downloads/5982-9141EN.pdf 5982-9141EN, Rev. 1 February 2006
33 From HP Partitioning Continuum for HP-UX 11i on HP 9000 and HP Integrity servers, p. 19 "Dynamic reallocation of CPU resources (Integrity VM has workload management technology built into the VM host that moves resources from idle guest operating system instances to busy operating system instances.)" http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/downloads/5982-9141EN.pdf 5982-9141EN, Rev. 1 February 2006
34 From HP Partitioning Continuum for HP-UX 11i on HP 9000 and HP Integrity servers, p. 35 "100% CPU entitlement is available, but CPU is not dedicated." http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/downloads/5982-9141EN.pdf 5982-9141EN, Rev. 1 February 2006
35 From HP Integrity Virtual Machines A.03.00 Installation, Configuration, and Administration, p.72 "The VM Host maintains complete control of the physical hardware and handles the virtual machine I/O operations just as it would be handled for any other user application. Thus, just as hardware is shared among normal applications running on the VM Host, virtual machine I/O is shared across the physical storage as well." and p. 77 "Multipath solutions are supported on the VM Host only, not on virtual machines," http://docs.hp.com/en/T2767-90067/index.html HP Part Number: T2767-90067 Published: April 2007, Edition 3
36 From HP Integrity Virtualization (VSE) Competitive Advantages vs. IBM System p, slide 18 "Shared I/O is handled directly by the VM host." http://pokgsa.ibm.com/~jhuston/public/HP/HPVirtapril2007.pdf, 2006
37 From HP Integrity Virtual Machines A.03.00 Installation, Configuration, and Administration, p.30 "Attached I/O devices, such as tape, DVD burner, and autochanger, are not presented as virtual devices; they are presented as direct I/O device. You specify both the physical device to allocate to the virtual machine and the virtual device name that the virtual machine will use to access the device." http://docs.hp.com/en/T2767-90067/index.html HP Part Number: T2767-90067 Published: April 2007, Edition 3
38 From HP Integrity Virtual Machines A.03.00 Release Notes, p.34 "When you specify the guest memory, use a multiple of 64 MB." http://docs.hp.com/en/T2767-90047/T2767-90047.pdf HP Part Number: T2767-90047Published: June 2007
Dyanmic Domain Notes
39 "Each Domain runs its own copy of the Solaris OS." From p. 49 of "Sun SPARC Enterprise Mx000 Servers Administration Guide", Part No. 819-3601-11, September 2007, Revision A http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/819-3601-11/819-3601-11.pdf
40 "[The Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000-64 server] supports up to 64 dual core SPARC64 VI 64-bit Chip Multithreading (CMT) processors (up to 128 cores), 2 TB of memory" From p.1 of "Sun SPARC Enterprise Servers System and Resource Management", http://www.sun.com/servers/sparcenterprise/SPARCEnt-ResMan-Final.pdf
41 See Table 4-1 "Boards, Domains, and Domain ID Numbers" on p. 50 of "Sun SPARC Enterprise Mx000 Servers Administration Guide", Part No. 819-3601-11, September 2007, Revision A http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/819-3601-11/819-3601-11.pdf and http://www.sun.com/servers/index.jsp?tab=1
42 "Each of the four XSBs contains one-quarter of the total board resources: 1 CPU, 8 DIMMS, and I/O" From p. 47 of "Sun SPARC Enterprise Mx000 Servers Administration Guide", Part No. 819-3601-11, September 2007, Revision A http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/819-3601-11/819-3601-11.pdf and "DR functions on these servers are performed on an XSB." From p. 1-2 of "Sun SPARC Enterprise Mx000 Servers Dynamic Reconfiguration User's Guide", Part No. 819-5992-11, September 2007, Revision A http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/819-5992-11/819-5992-11.pdf
43 "Then, the kernel memory on the system board to be deleted is copied into memory on the selected copy-destination system board. The system is suspended while the copying is in progress." From p. 2-8 of "Sun SPARC Enterprise Mx000 Servers Dynamic Reconfiguration User's Guide", Part No. 819-5992-11, September 2007, Revision A http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/819-5992-11/819-5992-11.pdf
44 "A CPU to be deleted must meet the following conditions: No running process is bound to the CPU to be deleted. If a running process is bound to the target CPU, you must unbind or stop the process." From p. 2-5 of "Sun SPARC Enterprise Mx000 Servers Dynamic Reconfiguration User's Guide", Part No. 819-5992-11, September 2007, Revision A http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/819-5992-11/819-5992-11.pdf
45 "Each instance of the Solaris OS running in a Dynamic Domain has access to its own resources, providing complete isolation of one Solaris instance from any other instance running on the same server." From p. 1 of "Introduction to Dynamic Reconfiguration and Capacity On Demand For Sun SPARC Enterprise Servers", Part No. 820-2084-10, Revision 1.0, 4/22/07, Edition: April 2007, http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0407/820-2084.pdf
46 "A domain must have, at a minimum, 1 CPU, 8 DIMMs, and I/O" From p. 49 of "Sun SPARC Enterprise Mx000 Servers Administration Guide", Part No. 819-3601-11, September 2007, Revision A http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/819-3601-11/819-3601-11.pdf LDOM notes
47 "The guest domain must run an operating system that understands both the sun4v platform and the virtual devices presented by the hypervisor. Currently, this is the Solaris 10 11/06 OS at a minimum." From p. 47 of "Logical Domains (LDoms) 1.0.1 Administration Guide", Part No. 820-3268-10, September 2007, Revision A, http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/820-3268-10/820-3268-10.pdf
48 See Table 1 "Supported Servers" from p. 2 of "Logical Domains (LDoms) 1.0.1 Release Notes", Part No. 820-3269-10, September 2007, Revision A, http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/820-3269-10/820-3269-10.pdf
49 See Table 1 "Supported Servers" from p. 2 of "Logical Domains (LDoms) 1.0.1 Release Notes", Part No. 820-3269-10, September 2007, Revision A, http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/820-3269-10/820-3269-10.pdf and http://www.sun.com/servers/index.jsp?tab=1
50 "DR of virtual CPUs is completely disabled on all active logical domains that contain any cryptographic units" From p. 13 of "Logical Domains (LDoms) 1.0.1 Release Notes", Part No. 820-3269-10, September 2007, Revision A, http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/820-3269-10/820-3269-10.pdf
51 "Dynamic reconfiguration (DR) is the ability to add or remove resources while the operating system is running. The Solaris 10 OS supports only the adding and removing of virtual CPUs (vcpus). Dynamic reconfiguration of memory and input/output is not supported in the Solaris 10 OS." and "Also, when there is a delayed reconfiguration outstanding for one logical domain, reconfiguration requests for other logical domains are severely restricted and will fail with an appropriate error message" From p. 6 and 7 of "Logical Domains (LDoms) 1.0.1 Administration Guide", Part No. 820-3268-10, September 2007, Revision A, http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/820-3268-10/820-3268-10.pdf
52 "From a Logical Domains Manager perspective, each of the threads in a system appear to be virtual CPUs, and as such, can be allocated independently to any domain in the system. In reality, threads are grouped into cores; for example, there are 4 threads per core in the Sun Fire and SPARC Enterprise T1000 CMT processors." From p. 25 of "BEGINNERS GUIDE TO LDOMS: UNDERSTANDING AND DEPLOYING LOGICAL DOMAINS for Logical Domains 1.0 release", Part No 820-0832-21, Revision 2.1, 10/9/2007, Edition: July 2007, http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0207/820-0832.pdf
53 "The domain and the virtual CPU number within the domain, which correspond to a given physical CPU number, can be determined with the following procedures." From p. 76 of "Logical Domains (LDoms) 1.0.1 Administration Guide", Part No. 820-3268-10, September 2007, Revision A, http://dlc.sun.com/pdf//820-3268-10/820-3268-10.pdf
54 "Also, there are hardware resources that are provided on a per-core basis and, therefore, are shared between the threads on that core. For the purposes of this discussion, the level 1 cache is an important such resource. Because of this, if the threads within a core are allocated to two or more separate domains, this could lead to suboptimal performance of those threads, due to cache thrashing. For that reason, to get the best performance from caches and other shared processor resources, it is best to avoid allocating the threads of a core to separate domains, if at all possible." From p. 25 of "BEGINNERS GUIDE TO LDOMS: UNDERSTANDING AND DEPLOYING LOGICAL DOMAINS for Logical Domains 1.0 release", Part No 820-0832-21, Revision 2.1, 10/9/2007, Edition: July 2007, http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0207/820-0832.pdf
55 "In Logical Domains 1.0.1 software, the virtualized I/O functionality comprises support for virtual networking, storage, and consoles." From p. 5 of "Logical Domains (LDoms) 1.0.1 Administration Guide", Part No. 820-3268-10, September 2007, Revision A, http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/820-3268-10/820-3268-10.pdf
56 "I/O domain: Domain that has direct ownership of and direct access to physical I/O devices ... The number of I/O domains you can have is dependent on your platform architecture. For example, if you are using a Sun UltraSPARC® T1 processor, you can have a maximum of two I/O domains, one of which also must be the control domain." From p. 44 of "Logical Domains (LDoms) 1.0.1 Administration Guide", Part No. 820-3268-10, September 2007, Revision A, http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/820-3268-10/820-3268-10.pdf
57 "The memory can be allocated in increments as small as 8KB chunks" From p. 15 of "BEGINNERS GUIDE TO LDOMS: UNDERSTANDING AND DEPLOYING LOGICAL DOMAINS for Logical Domains 1.0 release", Part No 820-0832-21, Revision 2.1, 10/9/2007, Edition: July 2007, http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0207/820-0832.pdf and See Table 1 "Supported Servers" from p. 2 of "Logical Domains (LDoms) 1.0.1 Release Notes", Part No. 820-3269-10 September 2007, Revision A, http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/820-3269-10/820-3269-10.pdf
VMWare notes
1 VMWare Configuration Maximums for VMware Infrastructure 3 http://pubs.vmware.com/vi301/config_max/vi3_301_201_config_max_update.2.1.html July 23, 2007
2 Source: Vmware Infrastructure 3 Online Library http://pubs.vmware.com/vi301/quick_start/vi_quick_start_manage.5.26.html "You cannot edit most virtual machine properties if the virtual machine is powered on" 10/11/07
3 Sources: Vmware ESX Server 2.5.0 and VirualCenter 1.2.0 Validation Report, Version 1.7 March 27, 2006 http://www.commoncriteriaportal.org/public/files/epfiles/ST_VID10056-VR.pdf IBM certification info at http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/aix/products/aixos/certifications/index.html
4 VMWare Configuration Maximums for VMware Infrastructure 3 http://pubs.vmware.com/vi301/config_max/vi3_301_201_config_max_update.2.1.html July 23, 2007