HP-UX

parstatus and vparstatus will give you an idea whether you're dealing with physical (NPAR) or virtual (VPAR) partitions here. If you are running a VPAR it's possible that CPUs have been removed using vparmodify?

Hi mj62mj62,

Well to begin, let me tell you what type of server you have from the output you gave me. It should be a HP Integrity Superdome 32-way server. It can have up to 64 processor sockets, four per cell, with each cell having either single Intel® Itanium® 2 processors or dual-core Intel® Itanium® 2 processors. (Up to 128 processor cores total when using dual-core processors.)

Per the machinfo, it seems that you have 8 processors.

If this is my setup, I would configure it with npar and vpar on top of it. I do not say that it should be the case, however, the ideal plan of having a superdome/cell based server would be having npar's and vpar's on each npar's.

If you would like to check if you have configured vpar's on top of npar's, you can just check if the daemons for vpar are running using ps -ef | grep <dameon name>
vpard
vphbd
vconsd - Not for your case as your superdome is itanium based.

If yes, vpar should be configured I believe. Also, you can check using the swlist command to see if a vpar package is installed. Also, FYI, vpar lisence is issued on per "processor" basis.

FYI, parstatus for npar and vparstatus for vpar should work as well. You can use vparmodify to modify the parameters, however, first collect more information about the structure before modifying as if its configured and we modify, it depends on a lot of things. Including memory, iochasis, core io, processor set and memory granules, lba's and so on...

Comming back to the scenario.
Have you heard of the term icod? Actually, its "Instant Capacity on Demand". It works like this, when you purchase a superdome with required cellboards in it, you can do an offer while purchasing like you buy a cellboard with some processors, however, you would not be using it. If in case, you need an immediate requirement in future for 2 more cpu's, you pay the money to HP to collect a lisence and use that CPU for the specified period. So, that's when you use that processor and once the lisence expires, you're done and back to normal.

An important concept in npar's and vpar's on it is Processor Sets. Processor sets inter operate with other partitioning mechanisms in HP Partitioning Continuum and
also with the HP Utility Pricing offerings (iCOD, pay-per-use, and pay-per-forecast). The psets are fully integrated into PRM and can be configured using the PRM GUI.

So, I believe that this may also be a scenario here being this as a superdome server.

To be more clear on this situation, Check the below.
= How many cellboards do you have on your server?
= Is there a vpar configured on top of npar?
= If yes, how many N partitions are there and V partitions accordingly?
= Also, how many processors are allotted for each vpar?
= How many processors are floating?
=> floating processors are those who can move across vpar's without changing configuration.
= What about the information about licensing for your vpar?

These things should help you IN CASE, you have a vpar and npar setup on your server ELSE IF, am sorry.. lol.

That should not be the case I guess as top or machinfo wont work if case of a version problem or incompatibility, instead, it would not throw wrong information. As of I know.

I can help you with more information on whichever I know if the need may be

Cheers!
-DB

Thank you so much for your detailed post on the subject.

I've learned a great deal in the process.

After lots of digging, it turns out that we are running vpar's. The vpar's are 'instances' I didn't even know about. When logging into those instances I can see the other CPU's. It looks like the one superdome has been 'split' into 3 separate machines with 3, 3 and 2 cpu's respectively.

That explains it!

Many Thanks!