HELP! HP vs AIX

[Dan Matlock_1]

I am currently fighting a battle at my company as the HP guy. There are others here who are pro-IBM and want to take my HP budget and buy more AIX servers. Unfortunetly for me, they are saying that HP PA-RISC is going away and therefore HP UNIX future is uncertain!!! They are stating that when other companies start shutting down chip production, the OS is not far behind it. What can I do to stop this...need ammo to counter the IBM brainwashers. Obviously we are a mix shop, and they want all the toys! We run oracle and sybase......

[Alan Meyer_4 · Accepted solution]

sure. PA-RISC is shutting down but Itanium is ramping up. Also, from experience here in our mixed shop, HP support is far superior that IBM.

[Robert-Jan Goossens_1]

Hi,

Check this link.

http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/direction.html

Regards,
Robert-Jan

[Mel Burslan]

Your best line of defense would be is the uncertainity of the future of AIX, as IBM lines up all its guns behind Linux. When was the last time AIX had a major revision upgrade with feature enhancements ? Does anyone remember ? Yes, it will be a sad day when they roll out the last PA-RISC powered system down the production line but, IA64 (a.k.a. Itanium) architecture is not looking bad at all as a replacement platform. And since you are buying new equipment, you can jump on the bandwagon from now.

[Marvin Strong]

While they are going to phase out PA-RISC, I think they are going to continue to sell PA-RISC through 06 and support it until 2011.
At least last I read a while back that was the plan. And they may have changed that plan.

Simply moving to a superior chip set, is no reason to claim that HP Unix future is uncertain. Computers are constantly evolving, and HP has spent alot of money in the Itanium arena, so I would doubt that they are going to abandon HP Unix for Itanium.

Also with the newer servers, ugrading from PA-RISC to Itanium should be a simple in box change if memory serves from some other information I have read recently. Clearly there is no reason to fear the future of HP Unix.

[Mohanasundaram_1]

Hi Dan,

AS others indicated, the end of PA-RISC does not mean end of HP-UX. The Itanium boxes are getting stable now with the newer firmware versions.

I have worked with Itanium midrange servers for the past 1 year and can confidently say that most of the initial problems they had, have been ironed out.

HP-UX is already available on Itanium platform and is doing good. I am sure IBM will point out lot of issues/articles about Itanium, but the issues were during the initial stages of Itanium and presently the systems are reliable as your PA-RISC systems.

With regards,
Mohan.

[Rick Garland]

AIX is the OS that is planned to go away. IBM is planning to phase out AIX in favor of Linux (with AIX extensions).

With HP you will still have ther HPUX in addition to the Linux.

As mentioned earlier, the support for HPUX is far superior to IBM's support. This forum is just 1 example - and this is a user forum at that. What does AIX have in comparison?

IBM has been losing money on their UN*X support and services for some time now. They are trying to push into running and managing companies IT infrastructure. This means that the jobs of the UNIX SAs is questionable as these companies start outsourcing to IBM. And then IBM outsources overseas.

For databases, Oracle has a very small install base on AIX. Oracle does not like AIX. Oracle is not compiled on AIX - it is ported.

[Geoff Wild]

HP-UX isn't going away - too big of a market share for HP.

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/hp/hpux-faq/section-8.html

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/hp/hpux-faq/section-9.html


And "HP-UX 11i v2 on HP Integrity servers delivers enterprise UNIX at up to 20% lower TCO than IBM AIX with p-series and SUN Solaris with SUN Fire servers. Don't get left behind! ":

http://www.hp.com/products1/unix/operating/hpux11i9m.html?jumpid=in_11i9m_integrity-home


Rgds...Geoff

[Steven E. Protter]

HP is migrating to a new hardware architecture, based on Intel built Itanium chips.

HP-UX isn't going anywhere.

SEP

[Hakan Aribas]

We are a new company (3 years old). At the beginning we evaluated the candidates: IBM pSeries, HP Integrity and Sun, and we chose HP because of support quality and high performance of Integrity servers. I am happy now for this right decision! :-)