HP Instant Capacity (iCAP) Instant Capacity Cell Board, Global Instant Capacity, GiCAP Groups

capacity time. This allows temporary activation of cores without requiring the purchase and activation of an RTU codeword for permanent activation.

Whenever an Instant Capacity component without usage rights is purchased, an amount of Instant Access Capacity (IAC) might also be included. Instant Access Capacity is exactly the same as temporary capacity, except it is automatically provided with an Instant Capacity component and is not separately purchased. It provides an immediate buffer of temporary capacity in case extra capacity is needed before there is time to purchase either an RTU codeword, a temporary capacity codeword, or to setup a Global Instant Capacity (GiCAP) group.

Temporary capacity can be added to the complex by applying a temporary capacity codeword (available from the HP Utility Pricing Solutions portal) using the icapmodify command. Information about the amount of temporary capacity time remaining on a complex can be obtained by executing the icapstatus command. A warning is also sent via email when the temporary capacity balance is expected to be depleted within a certain period of time.

The icapmodify command allows activating a core using temporary capacity only if at least 30 minutes of temporary capacity is available for each core being activated.

Whenever temporary capacity has been applied to a system (or if the complex is part of a GiCAP group), extra care must be taken to avoid situations that cause the Instant Capacity software on one nPartition of a group member to make assumptions that all cores might be active on another nPartition of the member, for example, when the nPartition is making boot-related configuration changes (at EFI or BCH). If left in this state for more than 12 hours, unexpected temporary capacity may be consumed on the complex.

Instant Capacity Cell Board

Instant Capacity Cell Board offers a way to have additional (inactive) cell board capacity for your system. These Instant Capacity cell boards, which contain memory and cores, can be activated after a cell RTU codeword is obtained from the HP Utility Pricing Solutions portal and is applied to the complex using the icapmodify command. To activate a cell, you must have usage rights for all memory attached to the cell and at least one core.

Global Instant Capacity

Global Instant Capacity (GiCAP) provides HP customers with the flexibility to move usage rights for Instant Capacity components within a group of servers. It also provides “pooled” temporary capacity across the group. This has several potential benefits: cost-effective high availability, more adaptable load balancing, and more efficient and easier use of temporary capacity.

For example, in case of planned or unplanned down time, a customer can transfer usage rights from a failed partition on one server to one or more other servers in the group that are providing backup availability, thus allowing additional activations of iCAP components on the backup servers. Without GiCAP, the only way to provide this failover scenario is to provision each server with an adequate amount of temporary capacity.

A similar scenario exists for load balancing. Rather than using temporary capacity whenever a server is overloaded (peak profiles for all workloads on a server), usage rights can be transferred from other servers in the GiCAP group that have extra capacity. These borrowed usage rights enable new component activations on the overloaded system.

Pooled temporary capacity for a group of servers is more efficient because all temporary capacity is available to all servers in the GiCAP group. It is also easier to manage if temporary capacity needs to be applied to only one member of the group and monitored across the group instead of monitoring TiCAP for each member complex.

GiCAP Groups

Global Instant Capacity is built on the concept of a server group, or GiCAP group. The group consists of a list of server complexes that are allowed to share Instant Capacity usage rights (for cores, cell boards, and memory) and temporary capacity. There are no constraints on the number

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