In article <1157454798.377582.214950@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups .com>,
"Tim Bradshaw" <tfb+google@tfeb.org> wrote:

> jKILLSPAM.schipper@math.uu.nl wrote:
>
> > In comp.unix.bsd.openbsd.misc Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> wrote:
>
> > > Provided it's supported by the HW, Solaris DOES support hotswapping
> > > CPUs...
> >
> > Nice. Not necessarily useful, but thoroughly nice.
> >
>
> As should be clear from some other followups: actually it's *terribly*
> useful. As (yet another) example, big Sun machines can be divided into
> `domains' which are partitions of the hardware of the machine, on each
> of which a separate Solaris instance runs. It can often be useful to
> move CPUs (really, to move system boards, which contain several CPUs
> and some memory) between domains, thus adding resources to one while
> removing it from another. And for the applications these machines
> typically run, you generally want to do this without bouncing either
> donor or recipient domain because people will run around screaming and
> turning pink if you do.
>
> --tim

Solaris _almost_ had this a couple years ago. Don't know about now with
the newer machines and Solaris 10. A former manager, a died in the wool
SUN advocate/fanboy, complained every time a new release of Solaris came
out because he hated having to reboot after a hardware change. The
hardware he had (E6800, bunches of E4500, that generation) all required
downtime to add SCSI interfaces, disks, memory, even replacing a SCSI
tape. He longed for the day when the HW support person would _call him_
and tell him there was a problem that required repair and when did he
want to schedule it and no it would not require downtime, just quiet
time. The only reason the EMC frame was in the datacenter as long as it
was was because this was how they did their service.

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