vPar a Large Production Environment & Usage of idle CPUs for Test, Dev, etc.

[Alzhy]

We've a need for temporary "large" environments (anywhere between 4 to 16 CPUS) for use in data loading/mining, conversion, mocks and performance tests. It has been somewhat decided to "simply" purchase additional cell boards for an existing rp8420 frame to servce this purpose.

On the other hand, we've a SuperDome where 3 nPars - totalling 32 CPUs accross 6 cell boards and 2 cabinets - 2 nPars with 8 CPUs and 1 nPar with 16 CPUs. 90% of the time, only 2 to 4 CPUs are used on these nPars. There is ample unused memory.

I am thinking instead of buying new/additional hardware - to just purchase a 32CPU vPar license, convert the 3 nPars to just one and convert the nPars to vPars with the addition of one vPar that will be that flexible environment I described above. This way.. whenever there is a need for such an environment - we simply channel the CPUs from the 3 production vPars to this particular vPar. What do you guys and gals think?

We've been running vPars on a separate 32-way rp8420 for the last 2 years and doing precisely dynamic CPU allocations amongst our vPar environments maximizing use of resources. And we've never had any single crash or anomaly with our vPar'ed environment.

The savings could be pretty significant. A 16-CPU system either in the form of a new frame or additional Cell Boards is not cheap compared to the license of a vPar.

[Pete Randall]

My first thought is that 32 vPar licenses at $1708 apiece comes to $54656. Is that really going to save you anything?

Something to be considered.


Pete

[Alzhy]

Pete,

Yes.. absolutely. Even with annual maintenance.

Compare that to a new rp8420 with 2 CELL Baords (16 CPUS..) or 2 SuperDome Cell Boards with 8 dual-core PA8800 CPUs.. Not to mention maintenance, power and cooling, data center space..

[Pete Randall]

Yeah, I understand, Nelson - just pointing out that it's not exactly free.

Good luck.


Pete

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Nelson:

Using virtual partitions seems to be a more and more common industry direction. "Renting" processing power only when you need it; shifting (or "selling") it to something else when you don't makes sense. You can see the paradigm in many arenas:

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/

Regards!

...JRF...

[Chan 007]

Nelson,

We have similar think and all works fine.

But your ROI can be calculated in additon to Maintenance, your save your floor space, getting a Enterprise OS, 24*7 even you have test&devl as your Production also runs on the same...you gain more than loose..

We have many vpars on SDs...

007

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Nelson,

NOt sure what version of HPUX you're on, but you might want to think hard about going straight to 11iv2 if you're going to use vPars, as this will allow you to use Vpars v04.01 which supports fully dynamic CPUs.

If you stay on HPUX11iv1 and vPars03.x, then any 'floating' CPUs can't handle interrupts which might impact the performance of your loading/mining etc.

HTH

Duncan

[Mark Nieuwboer]

Hi nelson,

Your idee is good for the superdome.
But what you also can do is. Make a hole new configuration.
one npar of 10 to 12 cpu, and make in this npar 3 vpars with each a configuration to use minimaal 2 cpu and max 6 cpu and put the production envirement on it. This mean you can make a second npar to test/play with. If your production enviroments grow bigger you just have to add an additional cellboard to it.

hope it's help.

grtz. Mark