New Features and Enhancements in This Release

The Integrity VM V3.5 release introduces new accelerated storage and networking products to improve the overall I/O performance for Integrity VM. These new Accelerated Virtual I/O (AVIO) products provide up to a 60% reduction in service demand and as much as twofold improvement in throughput over the existing fully virtualized storage and networking Integrity VM solutions. Performance depends on the application workload and, in general, is better with larger message sizes.

The following list describes enhancements to Integrity VM for this release:

Guests can run any of the following operating systems:
- HP-UX 11i v2 (May 2005 [0505] or later), including HP-UX 11i v2 0712
- HP-UX 11i v3
- Windows 2003 (Enterprise or Datacenter edition) SP1 and SP2
- Red Hat Linux Enterprise Edition Advanced Server Release 4 update 4 and update 5
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for HP Integrity servers SLES 10 update 1.

Integrity VM now includes the AVIO feature, which improves the performance of both storage and network access for virtual machines. AVIO is supported on HP-UX 11i v2 host and guests. This feature includes:
- Changes to the hpvmnet command. The changes include displaying the adapter type for each port defined on the vswitch and getting port specific statistics.
- Changes to the hpvmresources and hpvmstatus manpages to include the new AVIO adapter names for guest creation: avio_lan and avio_stor.
- Changes to the hpvmcollect command to add values for AVIO LANs and storage.
- Changes to the hpvmcreate, hpvmclone, and hpvmmodify commands to add the designation for an AVIO network adapter and an AVIO storage adapter on a guest. The network adapter designator is avio_lan, and the storage adapter designator is avio_stor. For more information, see Section .
Hierarchy checking is now provided in Integrity VM.
The hpvmdevmgmt command has been changed to provide hierarchy checking by adding a host-file-system directory to the device database as a restricted device. All files, devices, and subdirectories under a restricted directory are also restricted. A directory may not be restricted if a file, device or subdirectory is already in use by a guest.
New public APIs are defined in hpvm_api_public.h for host and guests. The following APIs have been added to Integrity VM:
- hpvm_api_server_check — Checks if running on an Integrity VM server system.
- hpvm_api_virtmach_check — Checks if running on an Integrity VM virtual machine.
- hpvm_api_version_get_machine — Gets the version string of an Integrity VM server or virtual machine.
- hpvm_api_my_uuid_get_machine — Gets the uuid for this running Integrity VM server or virtual machine.
- hpvm_api_server_uuid_get — Gets the uuid for the Integrity VM server of the virtual machine running this API.
- hpvm_api_server_hostname_get — Gets the host name for the Integrity VM server of the virtual machine running this API.
The EFI direct tape boot functionality has been added to Integrity VM. If you use the Ignite make_tape_recovery utility on the HP-UX guest to make a backup tape of that guest system, you can use the backup tape to boot from EFI to perform the restore and reinstallation from the backup tape.

The hpvminfo command has been changed to display the information returned by the supported public interfaces defined in hpvm_api_public.h. For example, use the command as follows when running on a VM host:

# hpvminfo -S
HPVM Server information
VERSION: HPVM A.03.50 clearcase opt Wed Sep 19 2007 12h20m34s EDT
MY UUID: 58d03fSd-79ed-11d9-b720-17c097e9e0d0

Simarly, use the command as follows when running on a guest:

# hpvminfo -S
HPVM Guest information
VERSION: HPVM A.03.50 clearcase opt Mon Aug 01 2007 13h32m14s EDT
MYUUID:  1C57939a-56b1-11dc-a903-0017a4510fc0
SERVER UUID:  58d03fSd-79ed-11d9-b720-17c097e9e0d0
SERVER HOSTNAME: test.case.com

You can now add a server in one step instead of three. Previously, you needed to specify three commands to add an HPVM server. For example, the following three commands add a server whose host name is company:
1. Add the entry:
  hpvmdevmgmt -a server:company
2. Add the SERVERID attribute:
  hpvmdevmgmt -a server:company:attr:SERVERID=5
3. Add the SERVERADDR attribute:
  hpvmdevmgmt -a server:company:attr:SERVERADDR=16.116.66.159
Although the three steps still work, you can now add a server by entering a single command, for example:
# hpvmdevmgmt -a server:company:attr:SERVERID=5,SERVERADDR=16.116.66.159
Storage used by the VM Host system is now better protected in this release. The new hpvmhostrdev command identifies disks, LUNs, and logical volumes used by the VM Host for its operating system, file system and swap storage as "restricted devices" in the Integrity VM device database. This prevents their use by virtual machines as storage, avoiding inadvertent corruption or destruction of the VM Host's environmnent.
When Integrity VM starts on the VM Host system, it invokes the hpvmhostrdev command, automatically adding these restricted devices to the Integrity VM device database. The hpvmhostrdev command is based on the same storage analysis tools used by System Management Homepage (SMH) and other Virtual Server Environment (VSE) management tools, maintaining consistency across HP management products.
The hpvmhostrdev command may also be used by privileged users on the VM Host system to update the Integrity VM device database. By default, the command forces a full hardware scan on the VM Host system. Depending on storage and network configuration, this may take several minutes to complete. This use may be prudent whenever new hardware is added to the VM Host system. The hpvmhostrdev command also accepts the -u option, which does not force a new HW scan, using the latest HW configuration information to update the device database. The only other option accepted by hpvmhostrdev is the -h, which provides a brief summary of the available options and their use.

New Features and Enhancements in This Release

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