The documentation referenced here describes the policies, guidelines, standards and procedures for insuring business continuity for the business function supported using IBM's Power 5 architecture. This architecture supports the ability to provide capacity on-demand and virtual I/O. The ability to micro-partition using pieces of a processor and dynamically allocate and deallocate memory is supported in this environment as well.
Business Continuity Foundation:
The Power 5 architecture provides the ability to define LPAR's and Virtual LPAR's. The difference between an LPAR and a Virtual LPAR is the implementation of the virtualization features. The Power 5 architecture allows the sytem administrator to configure logical partitions with dedicated resources such as processors, memory, and I/O adapters. The system administrator may also configure logical partitions utilizing shared processors, memory, and virtualized I/O adapters. The virtual I/O adapters are configured and made available to the LPAR's via the VIO server. The VIO server provides the ability to reduce the number of adapters required to support multiple LPAR's by virtualizing the hardware and allowing multiple LPAR's to share the same hardware I/O adapters.