Managed and unmanaged LPARs

A iCap policy can have managed and unmanaged LPARs. This topic describes the differences between managed and unmanaged LPARs.

Managed LPARs

By default, iCap manages all of the LPARs and capacity groups in the active policy. When you add a managed LPAR to the policy, iCap behaves as follows:

Related topics

Overview-of-MSU-limit-CPCMSU-limit-and-cost-limit

Overview-of-workload-prioritization

How-iCap-works

  • Based on the the parameters specified in the policy (such as priority, proportion, and low importance work), iCap assigns DCs to the managed LPARs.
  • iCap adjusts DCs based on an LPAR's 4HRA and the parameters specified in the policy.
  • If the LPAR's 4HRA exceeds its DC and there are available (unused) MSUs in the policy, iCap assigns the MSUs to the LPAR to avoid capping where possible.

You can add managed LPARs to the main policy and the subpolicies. You can also manage members of capacity groups as individual LPARs.

Unmanaged LPARs (PTF BQY2794 applied)

By specifying unmanaged LPARs in the active policy, you can include all of your LPARs in the policy, regardless of whether you want iCap to manage their DCs. iCap doesn't change the DCs of the unmanaged LPARs and the unmanaged LPARs can use MSUs up to their DC.

Before you add an unmanaged LPAR to the policy, make the following changes to the policy definition:

  • Increase the Initial MSU limit/MSU limit to include a portion of the expected usage of the unmanaged LPARs. 
  • Specify the Min Managed MSUs for the policy. This is the minimum number of MSUs that are reserved for the managed LPARs and groups in the policy.

The MSUs required by the unmanaged LPARs are distributed first. These MSUs are subtracted from the current MSU limit, leaving the remaining MSUs for the managed LPARs. The remaining MSUs cannot be less than the Min Managed MSUs.

Example

A policy has an MSU limit of 1200 and the Min Managed MSUs is 1000. There is one unmanaged LPAR in the policy with a DC of 250:

  • The unmanaged LPAR can use a maximum of 250 MSUs.
  • The managed LPARs can use a maximum of 1200, MSUs depending on the MSU usage of the unmanaged LPAR.

Therefore, if the unmanaged LPAR requires 100 MSUs, the managed LPARs can use a maximum of 1100 MSUs. If the unmanaged LPAR requires more MSUs (up to 250), fewer MSUs are available for the managed LPARs.

Important

  • Unmanaged LPARs must be individual LPARs in the main policy. That is, unmanaged LPARs can't be included in subpolicies.
  • iCap doesn't support unmanaged capacity groups.
  • Unmanaged LPARs can't be capacity group members.
  • Unmanaged LPARs require an active agent. 
  • You can't convert managed LPARs to unmanaged LPARs and vice versa. You must delete the LPAR from the policy and add it again as a managed or unmanaged LPAR, as described in Adding-entities-to-a-policy.
Warnings
  • If there is no agent running on an LPAR, iCap doesn't know the 4HRA of the unmanaged LPARs until the master PAS has been running for four hours. If there is a spike in MSU usage, the MSU limit might be exceeded.
  • The MSUs used by the unmanaged LPARs are not considered in the CPC MSU Limit. Therefore, if there are unmanaged LPARs in a policy and there is a spike in MSU usage, the CPC MSU limit might be exceeded.

For information about defining the Initial MSU limit/MSU limit and Min Managed MSUs parameters, see Policy-level-and-subpolicy-level-parameters. For information about adding unmanaged LPARs to a policy, see Adding-entities-to-a-policy.

 

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