Physical and virtual hardware resources

When you partition a managed system, you can assign the physical resources on the managed system directly to logical partitions. You can also share hardware resources among logical partitions by virtualizing those hardware resources. The methods used to virtualize and share hardware resources depend on the type of resource that you are sharing.

Virtual adapters
Virtual adapters allow you to connect logical partitions with each other without using physical hardware. Operating systems can display, configure, and use virtual adapters just like they can display, configure, and use physical adapters. Depending on the operating environment used by the logical partition, you can create virtual Ethernet adapters, virtual Small Computer Serial Interface (SCSI) adapters, and virtual serial adapters for a logical partition.
How each OS implements virtual resources
The manner in which virtual resources are implemented on a logical partition depends upon the operating system used on the logical partition.
Processors
This information describes how you can set the managed system to distribute its processing capacity among the logical partitions on the managed system.
Memory
Processors use memory to temporarily hold information. Memory requirements for partitions depend on partition configuration, I/O resources assigned, and applications used.
Expansion unit
You can add expansion units to many of the models to support additional features and devices. If you want to create logical partitions on your server, you might need to add an expansion unit that contains the additional hardware that you need for each logical partition.
Terminal and console options for logical partitions
You can initiate a terminal or console session to the logical partitions on your managed system using a variety of methods. Your choice of terminal or console depends on your operating system and business needs.
I/O devices
I/O devices allow your managed system to gather, store, and transmit data. I/O devices are found in the server unit itself and in expansion units and towers that are attached to the server. I/O devices can be embedded into the unit, or they can be installed into physical slots.
5250 CPW for i5/OS logical partitions
5250 commercial processing workload (5250 CPW) is the capacity to perform 5250 online transaction processing (5250 OLTP) tasks on i5/OS® logical partitions.
Barrier-synchronization register
The barrier-synchronization register (BSR) is a memory register that is located on certain POWER® technology-based processors. You can write a parallel-processing application running on AIX® so that the application uses a BSR to perform barrier synchronization, which is a method for synchronizing the threads in the parallel-processing application. If you use version 7 or later of the Hardware Management Console (HMC) to create logical partitions, you can divide BSRs into arrays and assign BSR arrays to partition profiles.

Parent topic: Concepts for partitioning the server

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Last updated: Fri, Oct 30, 2009