HP Integrity BL870c Server-Blade - Manual (Page 40)

NOTE: The bay 1, 2, 3, 4 notation in the "Blade Description" column assumes the BL890 is
installed in the lowest-numbered bays in the enclosure. Those bay numbers would be different for
a BL890 installed in bays 5-8, for example.
The descriptions of the blades in each nPar for a BL870c i4 are:
Table 8
Blade Description nPar
The blade in bay 1 is the monarch blade and the blade in bay 2 is the auxiliary blade. AA
Both blades are monarch blades. AB
VCM is no more than an observer when the configuration of a Blade Link Domain is changed. The
domain monarch iLO controls the configuration of nPars in the Blade Link Domain, the OA
communicates with both the iLO and VCM and VCM receives messages from the OA about server
blade status and the configuration of nPars in the Blade Link Domain.
When the configuration of a Blade Link Domain is changed, VCM updates its information to reflect
the new configuration. It does this by doing the following:
1. VCM first acts as if each nPar that is affected by the configuration change has been removed.
Thus, for a short period of time (a minute or so) it would appear looking at the VCM GUI that
those nPars and the blades assigned to them do not exist.
2. VCM then updates its data to reflect the new configuration of the Blade Link Domain. When
looking at the VCM GUI, the blades again appear to exist and the new set of nPars is now
shown.
3. VCM then applies any profiles that are assigned to monarch bays in any new or modified
nPars.
Note that VCM’s reaction to a Blade Link Domain configuration change is driven by messages
sent by the OA to VCM. Similarly, the OA’s reaction is driven by messages from the Blade Link
Domain monarch iLO to the OA. There is therefore a time lag from one minute to several minutes
as the reconfiguration of the Blade Link Domain actually occurs (it’s not instantaneous) and the
relevant messages get propagated from the iLO to the OA and on to VCM.
As an example, consider a BL890c i4 with a Blade Link Domain configuration of AACC that is
reconfigured to AACD. Assume that there are only two profiles, Test1 assigned to the AA nPar
and Test2 assigned to the CC nPar. The AA nPar is not affected by the configuration change, so
nothing happens with respect to the AA nPar and the profile Test1. However, VCM does the
following in reaction to the CC nPar being split into the C and D nPars:
1. VCM updates its data to remove the CC nPar.
2. VCM then updates its data to reflect the existence of the C and D nPars.
3. VCM then applies the profile Test2 to the C nPar. Since no other profiles exist, the D nPar
does not have any VC settings applied to it.
Scaling up the size of an nPartition
Scaling up the size of an nPartition means the number of server blades in the nPar has increased.
The possible scaling up of nPars are:
Table 9
nPar To nPar From
AACD, ABCC, AACC or AAAA ABCD
AACC, AAAA AACD or ABCC
AAAA AACC
40 Using Virtual Connect with nPartitions