HP-UX vPars Development Team Wants Your Feedback

[Hemanth Gurunath Basrur]

Hello ITRC Forum Participants,

The vPars development lab in HP is trying to determine if HP-UX customers need a GUI to manage vPars on HPUX servers and server complexes. The lab needs your feedback in order to make the correct decision. A few moments of your time to answer the following 7 short questions would be greatly appreciated and invaluable:

1. Do you use Virtual partitions (vPars) on a HP-UX server complex? If so, how many vPars and how many servers?


2. The vPars CLI (command-line interface) is on all releases, but HP-UX 11.11 also has a vPars GUI (Graphical User Interface) that can be used. Should a GUI be provided to manage vPars? Is this a want or a must?

3. Which versions should have the GUI and why?

4. Do you prefer a GUI over the CLI? Why or Why not?

5. Which features should be included in the vPars GUI? (What is essential versus what is really nice?)

6. Should the vPars GUI product be standalone or integrated with any of the HP-UX System Management and Virtualization tools like:

a. HP Virtual Server Environment (VSE)?
b. HP System Management Homepage (HP SMH)?

7. What are your primary challenges managing virtual partitions on a HP-UX server complex?

Thanks,
Hemanth

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

Shalom,

1) No.
2) Yes, makes it more competitive with windows and Linux Virtualization.
3) Not relevant, theoretical.
4) CLI. GUI should be like sam where we can see the underlying commands and learn the command line.
5) Start/stop/move resources between vpars
6) both
7) Getting people to understand Itanium is a good platform for our customers and interal users.

SEP

[Vihang.]

Hi Hemanth,

1) Yes, 2 Superdomes with 1 nPar & 3 vPars each. 2 rx8640 servers with 2 nPars with 1 out of the 2 nPars having 2 vPars each.
2) The vPars GUI is very helpful which makes complex tasks easy to execute. But I prefer using the CLI. Im a CLI guy :-D
3) If introduced, I think all versions should have it because users of different versions might need it.
4) I prefer the CLI. Its my personal preference, nothing to do with features.
5) Moving of CPU, Memory, IO cards should be there. Also, we should be able to create new vPars using the GUI.
6)It should be integrated with the System Management Homepage which I think is a very good tool.
7) Challenges used to be memory movement across vPars, which has been taken care in the 11.31 version I suppose.


Regards,
Vihang.

[TTr]

1. NO
2. Yes. Want
3. All supported versions
4. CLI. In general I prefer direct commnads than any interface managmenet tool.
5. All that are available in CLI
6. integrated with both tools.
7. N/A

[Torsten.]

1. Up to 8 vPars per nPar on several SD's and midrange systems. Even on a n-class for test.

2. Never needed. AFAIR I need to create at least 1 vPar first and boot it in order to use the GUI - so I stay with the CLI.
IMHO using the CLI is unix style and preferred by most admins.

3. Versions!
Imagine you don't know anything - what is newer? Version 3.05 or 4.02 for example?

To be honest - the current version numbering is IMHO one of the most confusing.

Why not something like

A.11.11.03.05 ???
A.11.23.04.05 ???
A.11.31.05.03 ???

4. CLI - always my first choice.

5. if a GUI, then let it look like the parmgr GUI. It would be essential + nice to find the configured slots on a large complex easily.

6. SMH
(I never used VSE so far, so I don't know it)

7. I configured my first system with version A.02.01 many years ago. This was a challenge. Since this time it is straight forward for me.

[Torsten.]

3. maybe much better: a numbering like


A.11.23.08.09 ... september 2008 release



just like the others do, e.g.

FEATURE11i B.11.23.0712.070 Feature Enablement Patches for HP-UX 11i v2, December 2007

HWEnable11i B.11.23.0712.070 Hardware Enablement Patches for HP-UX 11i v2, December 2007

RAID-01 B.11.23.0712 RAID SA; Supptd HW=A7143A/A9890A/A9891A
...

[Olivier Masse]

1. Yes, 1 complex with 5 vpars

2. Yes. I used to be a regular user of vparmgr in the old days

3. Everytihing starting from Vpar version 5 on 11iv3

4. I prefer a GUI, since as an occasional user this saves me a lot of time when reconfiguring vPars since I don't have to RTFM. :)

5. Anything for basic administration of vPars would be enough. More advanced operations are indeed better servced by a CLI.

6.a) I don't use VSE
6.b) I don't like the SMH-based tools either since they're clunky and dependent on HP-UX's CIM implementation which is not very reliable (at least from my experience). But it looks like they're the new platform for HP-UX GUI tools so I guess it would have to be SMH-based.

[Pete Randall]

1. Two vPars on one server.

2. Like Olivier, I used vparmgr to help overcome my unfamiliarity.

3. The latest version and subsequent.

4. I'm more of CLI sort but the GUI can be helpful when you're not used to doing something (how ofter do you make changes to vPars, really?)

5. Keep it simple and straightforward and show the commands behind the pretty interface.

6. Standalone and NOT java/browser based.

7. I don't like virtualization's loss of control. I feel like there's another layer between me and the machine and it makes it confusing. Just booting and not being able to see what's happening gives me ulcers.


Pete

[George_Dodds]

1) Yes, 3 Superdomes each with 4 nPars & 4 vPars.

2) The GUI does make things easier, especially druning a long nightshift when your brain just needs a little nudge on what to do next.

3) All versions, just to make life simpler.

4) CLI as thats all that was available at my first unix based job, plus i grew up on msdos.

5) CPU, Memory, IO cards modification.

6) I'd prefer standalone, but sometimes an intergrated management tool is better if you have a team of remote admins.

7) Getting everything done efficiently with minimal chance of errors.

[Robert Cook_6]

1. We have around 30 Vpars, pa-risc and itanium on 3 superdomes.

2. We use gWLM, global workload manager, which is a plugin to hpsim to manage our vpars. Very nice way to manage the environment.

7. One of the main challenges is getting good capacity and useage data in order to accurately predict when we need more capacity.

[Patrice Le Guyader]

1)yes. 8 Npars on 3 RX/RP.
134 Vpars on 12 SD.
109 Npars on 34 SD.

2)Yes, a must.

3) All versions and I think it must not be specific to a release. A GUI like VCS Cluster manager.

4)Why not, It can be a possibility to learn how to manage the vpars/npars, if you can see what are the command launched really.

5)All basic administration tasks, advanced ones need to done with CLI.

6)Standalone, with a release on windows,linux. You can include a GUI light in SMH but a heavy standalone one stay for me the good idea.

a) VSE : No opinion perhaps a light GUI.
b) SMH : a light GUI.

7) No real challenge. Just to be sure I'm working on the good one. ;-)

[Turgay Cavdar]

1. Yes. 40 vpars on 6 server.

2. Yes, a must.(Because partition manager, HPVM all have GUIs.Why not for vpar?

3. All.

4. I don't prefer GUI.

5. Creation of new vpars, modification of vpars.

6. It should be integrated with SMH and HPSIM/VSE

7. Managing vpars from central point from HPSIM/VSE

[likid0]

1. Yes, 45 vpars, 4/5 vpars per npar
2. I never used it on 11.11, don't really think you need a gui, cli does a good job.
3 If you are going to do a gui, it would be be better to have in all versions posible.
4. I prefer cli, because in many of my servers I don't have a chance to export xwindows nor web interface, with cli you allways know is going to work.
5. As features I think what would be great is a really good implementation with VSE and HPsim.
6.Integrated. with a and b.

7. what I have more problems with is the integration with efi hdw paths and the vpdb, more than once you get that your vpdb is not uptodate, and have to spend some time to get the server to boot

[Mark McDonald_2]

I've worked in several places with vpars in the last few years. None of them have had any need for much manipulation of the setup. I personally do not see any need for a GUI.

Once these Superdomes are in place (usually for billing) thy do not need to be touched. Running vparstatus is so much quicker than launching a gui.....

I've also come across some rp/rx 7/8000 boxes in development environments. These get reconfigured more regularly, but I do not see what benefit a GUI would add?

[Pulse001]

Hi Hemanth,

1) Yes, 7 superdomes with 53 vpars.
2) No, CLI is more than enough.
3) N/A
4) I prefer CLI because i can see and learn all the underlying commands.
5) N/A
6) standalone.
7) Dynamic memory movement across vpars.

[RUET]

1) Yes, 1 RP8440 with 4 npars and 8Vpars and 1 RX with 2 npars and 4 vpars
2) Yes, but CLI is always better (no intermediate layer).
3) N/A
4) both. GUI for admin purposes, CLI for troubleshouting
5) all (as npar manager GUI)
6) both, should be good to have an simple http access for management
7) Dynamic allocations across vpars.

[Basheer_2]

1) Yes, About 20 vPars in 2 Integrity Superdomes.

2) Want

3) 11.23 and 11.31. We have 11.23 and 11.31

4) Both, GUI for Training. Look Matters.

5) good to have same as the CLI. Nice to have CPU/Memory additions, deletions, modifications and document the vPars config (like print_manifest) and can we replicate vPar config if we removed a vPar.
6) Standalone and integrated SMH
7) Too many Tasks/Servers/nPars/vPars.

[Jozef_Novak]

1.) Yes, in the past, during my time with HP.
2 complexes with 6 vpars (3 each)

2.) Definitely not a must. CLI is sufficient.

3.) N/A

4.) CLI - easy to use and ones requires only ssh session to use it.

5.) N/A

6.) If so, then it should be included with VSE.

7.) The necessity to bring down the entire npar when servicing only one vpar. Customers were quite irritated by this.

J.

[F Verschuren]

1 Yes ~20 (after the blades les and les...)

2. I never use a gui so for me no.

3. If you use a GUI normaly you do not know what is behind it, du to our team only manager hpux (and no appilcations) we no not seek a easy way that can manager 90% of the problems, If there is a problem where the gui does not work you need also the genaral info.

4. see above, I do not prefer a gui, however if you only do configurations and no operations, it can be te easey way out.

5. needed:switch mem, switch cpu, enable/ disable cpu
nice to have: ad vpar/remove vpar form the configuration.

6. Intergrated in the vpar software, so that ever vpar configuration has the tool to manage the vpars..

7. none

Kind regards,
FReek