topic That Willow yet another billow? in Operating System - HP-UX

That Willow yet another billow?

Ralph Grothe — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 04:10:49 GMT

Hello,

received an HP software order reply request this morning where they proudly offer a product called "Willow 5.0 Base Release".
Since we don't run an arberetum I wonder what Willow could be and if it was of any use to us.
Maybe some premature X-Mas tree offering?
My superficial Internet searches for "HP" and "Willow" only lead me to a site whose url contained willowtech and who seem to offer services for some IBM WebSphere stuff on Itanium based HP servers.
Up until now we don't operate either.
But we do run a few Weblogic and JBoss servers,
and I heared it through the grapewine that our customers' Weblogic developers seriously consider shifting to WebSphere.
So if Willow has anything to do with WebSphere it might become of interest to us sooner or later.
Does anyone of you happen to run Willow
who could tell what it is, and whether it is worthwhile considering?

Regards
Ralph

Re: That Willow yet another billow?

Pete Randall — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 06:44:04 GMT

Ralph,

I did a search on all of HP US (see above), using +willow and -pond as search terms and came up with what I think is exactly the same Websphere/willowtech stuff you found:

Willow Technology announcement: WebSphere MQ V5.3 Server is now available on HP Integrity servers Related solutions

It seems to me that HP has a habit of doing things like this - acquiring technology and then making announcements about the acquisition without ever explaining what this new technology is supposed to do for us. Very frustrating.

Pete

Re: That Willow yet another billow?

Ralph Grothe — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 09:30:03 GMT

Hi Pete,

was difficult to get back to this thread
cause the responsiveness of the Forums webservers at the moment seems rather poor to non-existent.

-pond is a cute search criteria.
I also first thought of weeping willows. :-)

They should have provided a url for details about Willow either on the reply card or in the accompanying letter.
But if it's free of charge
(it reads: "We are pleased to inform you that under your support agreement you are elegible to receive the following software release:
Willow 5.0 Base Release)
I think I should order it to find out.
Maybe it comes with a more explicatory booklet?
I hope my crude interpretation of eligibility as being free of charge won't haunt me back.
You know, jurisdictive and colloquial English are two very different pairs of shoes, let alone for a foreigner.

Re: That Willow yet another billow?

Pete Randall — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 09:42:27 GMT

Hi Ralph,

I agree - it has been very difficult connecting to the Forums so far today. One minute everything seems good and the next nothing is available.

I wish you luck in your investigations!

Pete

Re: That Willow yet another billow?

Jaime Bolanos Rojas. — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 12:36:36 GMT

Ralph,

I actually had the nice oportunity to hunt that Willow thing down for some time yesterday after somebody asked me for it.

We got to the conclusion that it got something to do either with WebSphere or Veritas, the thing is that knowbody knows exactly what. :-)

Regards,

Jaime.

Re: That Willow yet another billow?

dirk dierickx — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 02:01:25 GMT

AFAIK it is version 5 of the veritas VM/FS bundle.

Re: That Willow yet another billow?

Duncan Edmonstone — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 12:05:52 GMT

Willow is the HP code-name for the Serviceguard Storage Management Suite (aka Serviceguard with Veritas CVM and CFS).

As Dirk correctly surmises, v5.0 is the release including v5 of all the Vx software...

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/262609-0-0-0-121.html

HTH

Duncan

Re: That Willow yet another billow?

Ralph Grothe — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 03:06:06 GMT

Hello Guys,

as I had a day off from work yesterday
(and was occupied with non-IT stuff such as changing my tyres, seeing doctors and bank reps. and other red tape)
I couldn't reply yesterday.
Thank you all for unveiling the Willow mystery.
If it's really a new bundling of the Service Guard Management Suite then we definitely have a vital requirement for this because we do run several MC/SG, VCS/VxVM as well as Oracle RAC clusters.

Re: That Willow yet another billow?

Alzhy — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 08:58:36 GMT

If you are subscribed on /can do SUM (Software Update Manager) - you will see Willow as referring to the newest new suite of Veritas Storage Tools now available on HP-UX (ONLY for HP-UX 11i v2.0 upwards though..)

There is also a URL on the Software Releases and Media URL, specifically the following URL:

http://www.hp.com/softwarereleases/releases-media2/latest/TRBASE/5_0.htm

I have not gone through what's new in the 5.0 suite which I will assume is again another fine integration with HP-UX. I can only surmise that the promised AsyncIO on Files (Yes Files!!!) in HP-UX 11.3x could possibly be a Veritas OEM'd technology (aka QuickIO)...

Re: That Willow yet another billow?

Duncan Edmonstone — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 15:20:56 GMT

Not sure about the async IO to files, but one point to bear in mind about 11iv3 is that when it is first released it will be with v4.1 of the Vx products... so don't go for v5.0 now if you want to be an early adopter and upgrade to 11iv3 early next year(or rather if you do, make sure you use the older disk layout versions for VxFS and VxVM)

HTH

Duncan