HP Integrity Virtual Machines
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| HP Integrity Virtual Machines | |
|---|---|
 Integrity VM 3.5 running a variety of guests |
|
| Developed by | Hewlett-Packard |
| Initial release | 2005 |
| Latest release | 3.5 / 2007 |
| Preview release | 4.0 / 2008 |
| Written in | C and Itanium Assembly language |
| OS | HP-UX, Linux, Windows, Open VMS |
| Platform | HP Integrity and other Itanium platforms supporting HP-UX |
| Genre | Virtual machine monitor |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | HP Official Web Site for Integrity VM |
Integrity Virtual Machines is software from Hewlett-Packard that allows multiple virtual machines to run concurrently on any Itanium server running HP-UX, notably the HP Integrity line. It is part of HP's Virtual Server Environment suite.
The product is optimized for server use.
Contents |
[edit] History
The prototype of Integrity Virtual Machines was developed between 2000 and 2003 by Christophe de Dinechin, Todd Kjos and Jonathan Ross[1][2]. It was then turned into a full-fledged product by a larger team of experienced Open VMS, Tru64 Unix and HP-UX kernel engineers.
- Version 1.0 and 1.2, released in 2005, ran HP-UX in virtual machines.
- Version 2.0, released in November 2006, additionally supports Windows Server 2003, CD and DVD burners, tape drives and VLAN.
- Version 3.0, released in June 2007, supports Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux[3]
- Version 3.5, released in late 2007, supports SUSE Linux Enterprise Server[4], HP-UX 11i v3 guests, new service packs for Windows and Linux guests, and accelerated virtual I/O for HP-UX guests[5], enabling better I/O performance and a larger number of devices.
Support for other flavors of Linux, as well as for OpenVMS is expected in later releases. Release 4.0 is planned for 2008
[edit] Capabilities
Exact specifications depend on the precise version and system configuration.
- The host configurations are the same as those supported by HP-UX, and can include 128 physical processors and 1TB of main memory.
- More than 250 guests can run concurrently, although the optimal number is generally lower, depending on host memory and processor configuration.
- Guests can have multiple virtual CPUs, the maximum number in supported configurations being 4 with existing releases.
- Guests can be configured with up to 64G of memory. In recent releases, memory can be adjusted dynamically for HP-UX guests.
- Virtual devices can be added or removed dynamically. The number of virtual devices allowed in supported configurations depends on the release. Version 3.5 supports up to 30 virtual devices, or up to 128 when accelerated virtual I/Os are used.
- The CPU allocation for virtual machines can be adjusted dynamically with a granularity of 1%. CPU time is allocated by a fair-share scheduler, which delivers better CPU utilization for SMP guests than a more simplistic gang scheduler.
[edit] User interface
Integrity Virtual Machines can be created and managed using a command line interface or a graphical user interface accessed using a web browser.
Essential commands include:
hpvmcreateto create virtual machineshpvmstatusto display status informationhpvmstartandhpvmstopto start and stop virtual machineshpvmmodifyto modify existing virtual machineshpvmconsoleto simulate a hardware console
The user interface is integrated in the HP Integrity Virtual Machines Manager[6].
