Linux by HP.

[harry_7]

Dear All,

My I know if HP has his own HP-Linux. With simple Linux-SAM, more stable rpm's, lvm, HP-ignite etc...


or just buy HP box and install any brabd of linux.

With Regards.

Harry.

[Matti_Kurkela · Accepted solution]

No, HP does not have "HP-Linux".
But if you want to run Linux on a HP server box, you should be aware that HP tests and supports only some distributions on HP hardware.

If you use a supported Linux distribution, you can get HP-specific hardware monitoring drivers, hardware RAID configuration utilities and diagnostic tools from HP webpages:

http://www.hp.com/go/support

If you use a distribution that is not supported by HP, the Linux OS will quite likely work if the hardware is not newer than the OS version... but you won't necessarily get the hardware monitoring to work and you will always have to boot the system to access any hardware RAID configuration menus.

SAM and Ignite products are for HP-UX only: they do not exist for Linux. However, there are various replacements in the world of Linux and open source. For example, SuSE Linux distributions have "yast", a SAM-like menu-driven configuration tool. RedHat has "system-config-*" tools, which are not integrated into one big tool like SAM or yast, but are otherwise very similar in concept.

There are also various backup solutions that can do more or less the same thing as Ignite.

My recommendation: choose a Linux distribution that is supported by HP for your chosen hardware. Then see what backup options that distribution has available. If it does not have an Ignite-like tool, find one that matches your requirements (either a commercial product or an open source package) and use that. As always, test your backup solution before relying on it.

MK

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Long ago, HP had something called HP Secure Linux or some non-sense.

They offered a temporary license and thought they would be able to sell it (or support).

It never took off.

So as noted above HP now supports major brands of Linux.

SEP

[Matti_Kurkela]

HP Secure Linux was very much like "RedHat with Mandatory Access Control and compartmentalizing features added" - or, in some ways, a child of HP-UX 11.04 VirtualVault in the Linux world.

It was designed to allow building hardened systems for special purposes - but then SELinux came out and offered a similar set of features for free.

It's a shame it's gone; we had one and I think it was more flexible than HP-UX VirtualVault and yet easier to configure for a particular setup than SELinux.

(Yes, I know SELinux now has plenty of ready-made targetted policies you can mix and match, and tools that help a lot in building and debugging custom policies - but at the time of HP Secure Linux, SELinux was rather painful to use.)

MK

[Ivan Krastev]

You can check for supported distributions and version, including custom software from HP as well at http://opensource.hp.com

regards,
ivan

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Harry:

HP supports the Enterprise versions of Red Hat and SuSE and to a lesser extent, Debian.

A nice overview of HP-UX versus Linux differences is provided in the "Linux Handbook":

http://www11.itrc.hp.com/service/cki/docDisplay.do?docLocale=en&docId=emr_na-c01543819-1

Regards!

...JRF...

[harry_7]

Dear All,

Many Thanks for your contributions.

I have a friend they are using HP-UX, but now they want to move to Linux. They are very happy with HP-UX (performance, support, stability) and HP Support. But on going forward to Linux still looking for a good H/W and OS support.

With Regards.

Harry.