Re: Can I use virtual partition on small Power 8

What do you mean by "2 copies of the OS"? Let me explain. Do you mean
"Do I pay for 2 copies of the os?" Or do you mean "Are the partitions at
separate levels of the OS?" The difference being one is just a licensing
issue. The latter is space and other concerns.

IBM does not charge you by partition for the OS. Other vendors have
extremely predatory pricing models. Some are better than others. Some
charge by CPU used, some charge by the partition. Some charge by both CPU
used and number of partitions. Some charge by CPU used, number of
partitions using their product and they also insist you pay for CPU used
by other processing pools (for other lpars) which cannot be used by their
software. Help Systems falls into this last category.
Then there is "virtual" cpu. For example you could have a 8 processor
CPU. With Microprocessor partitioning you could use as low as 0.1
processor on a single lpar. But you may decide to make that 2 virtual
CPU's. (Why is better explained by others.) Some software will charge
you by the virtual processors you use. They "mean" to charge by CPU but
the people coding their licensing system can't code to an IBM API to save
their soul.

But, yes, each lpar has their own copy of the OS. An lpar of 7.3, for
example, could host a lpar of 7.3, two of 7.2 and a couple of 7.1. And
each of those lpars could be at different PTF levels. Think of it this
way. You may want to try a ptf on your test system before moving it to
production.

I always use the HMC to control my partitioning. I hear of something
called Virtual Partition Manager but I really know nothing about that.
Like is there a limit to the number of partitions it can control or other
limitations.

There's a huge difference between partitioning nowadays and the early
stuff they had on Power 4. Totally incomparable.


Rob Berendt