topic 2014 March Virtual Server Edition release issues in Operating System - HP-UX

2014 March Virtual Server Edition release issues

corydd — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 18:37:03 GMT

This is just a heads up. Feel free to add to the thread, I spend very little time here. However, this may help to keep some of you out of trouble.

In April of this year, I upgraded a non-production host to 11iV3 2014 March VSE release. This includes TC097DA,r=11.13.000 and BB068AA,r=B.06.30. TC097DA is the Operations Agent/Performance Agent, BB068AA is the VM/vPars software fileset.

Per HP support, on May 29:

I have received an update from the Lab engineer.

They have finally found the root cause of the issue, what happens is that Operations Agent/Performance Agent 11.13 is certified on HPVM 6.20, and not on the latest HPVM 6.30.

As per the lab engineer, in order for glance to work with HPVM 6.30 it will require a platform refresh.

I opened the support ticket as a result of noting problems with monitoring capabilities after the upgrade.

HP support is having so many problems with the corporate data that I can't even view the enhancement request that's been filed on my behalf. In 25 years of supporting HP-UX, I've never been so thoroughly left in a fundamentally bad situation. Based on good faith, 2 weeks before I was notified of the non-certification issue, I did upgrade production systems. I'm now left with whole environments that are not certified to work as a whole.

I consider this to be a major problem. As a result of this, my employer no longer considers HP-UX to be a viable hosting platform, we'll be increasing our efforts to migrate away from HP-UX. Personally, I can no longer consider or recommend the use of HP-UX for any purpose.

Re: 2014 March Virtual Server Edition release issues

Stan_M — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 20:58:29 GMT

Well, so what we can help you with? Do you have any reference to refer to?

I'm surely not aware of any "so many problems with the corporate data", whatever that means.

I understand the problem has made it it to the performance tools lab and will eventually get fixed.

If you need some temporary solution, there is almost always chance for that, just follow up on your support case.

I'm not exactly sure how some isolated monitoring agent problem translates to not recommending HP-UX as such.

Re: 2014 March Virtual Server Edition release issues

corydd — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 13:35:21 GMT

I'm not expecting anyone here to "fix" the issue. My intent is solely to get this out in the open, under the assumption that other folks may have regulatory issues that could render March 2014 VSE a no-go.

"Corporate data" = HP's systems that keep support contract data. It's so fouled up that HP isn't able to allow me to access the enhancement doc that's tied to the support contract (this has been verified by a local support engineer, who I do trust implicitly.) My understanding is that updates should be going through that enhancement doc that I cannot access.

I know for sure at this point that I have a monitoring problem. Given that the components of the 2014 March VSE release are *NOT* certified with each other, I have no confidence that I don't have an operational issue that I haven't found yet. I've found bugs in releases before, I expect them. We rely somewhat heavily on the monitoring aspect, I expect that to be fully tested as part of the release (it's one of the selling points.) That's a behavior I'd expect from Microsoft or Oracle.