Administration Guide

System partitioning and the SP Switch

As discussed in Chapter 16, Managing system partitions, the SP system can be organized into groups of nodes for various purposes. You can have multiple system partitions in any system with the SP Switch.

Note:

The SP Switch2 does not support multiple SP system partitions. When you use the SP Switch2, the SP system must be configured as the default single system partition. This section applies only to an SP Switch system.

System partitioning has the following implications for the switch:

• Commands related to the switch:
  • Eannotator - Operates only within the current system partition
  • Eclock - Always operates globally (across system partitions)
  • Efence - Can operate globally (-G) or only within the current system partition
  • Eprimary - Operates only within the current system partition
  • Equiesce - Operates only within the current system partition
  • Estart - Operates only within the current system partition
  • Etopology - Operates only within the current system partition
  • Eunfence - Can operate globally (-G) or only within the current system partition
  • Eunpartition - Operates only within the current system partition
• Switch faults and message traffic are contained within a system partition.
• The subset of the switch defined by the topology file for the system partition is viewed as a logical switch.
• There is no connectivity over the switch between system partitions. (A gateway node with routing set up to the switch network may require routing changes if the gateway is to remain a gateway for more than one system partition. Use the explicit host routes on the gateway node or enable ARP on all system partitions and redefine the IP addresses within a system partition as a different subnetwork.)
• There remains one switch clock source, regardless of system partitioning.
• There is one primary node per system partition.