Compaq GS160, GS80, GS320 manual About Soft Partitioning

7.6Soft Partitioning

Soft partitioning allows you to run multiple instances of an OpenVMS operating system on one hardware system. Soft partitions are created by setting environment variables that define the number of partitions, as well as the CPU modules, I/O risers, memory size, and size of shared memory. Also, one partition is assigned to receive error interrupts. See the OpenVMS Alpha Galaxy Guide and GS80/160/320 Firmware Reference Manual for more information.

About Soft Partitioning

•Only the OpenVMS operating system supports soft partitioning.

•Each partition is maintained by the system management console.

•Each soft partition must have at least one CPU module, one memory module, an I/O riser module, and a PCI box with a standard I/O module.

•Each soft partition requires a standard I/O module with resident SRM firmware in order to boot an operating system copy (or instance).

•Two I/O risers in a QBB cannot be split between partitions.

•CPU and memory resources can be shared across partitions; I/O is bound to a particular partition.

You define what resources are allocated to each partition by setting SRM environment variables. Table 7–5 lists the environment variables used to create soft partitions. After you have assigned the environment variable values, issue the lpinit command to initialize the partitions defined.

7-22 AlphaServer GS80/160/320 User’s Guide