topic Re: Migrating Rdb from alpha to itanium in Operating System - OpenVMS

Migrating Rdb from alpha to itanium

Anthony Silverman — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:09:04 GMT

I am currently trying to calculate the costs involved in an alpha to itanium migration.

In particular I need to know about licensing issues and if I can move my rdb licenses from alpha to itanium without incurring additional costs.

I would be grateful to receive input from anyone who has been down this path.

Thanks,

Anthony

Re: Migrating Rdb from alpha to itanium

Hein van den Heuvel — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:35:05 GMT

You should contact Oracle for this.

They are not unlikely to allow you to move the license free of incremental cost.

That's what they (Oracle) communicated to a customer I work with who is migrating.

For the actual migrate we opted for RMU BACKUP, transfer files, RESTORE as the systems were not clustered. Easy enough.
RMU did the 7.0 - 7.2 touch-up on the fly.

hth,
Hein

Re: Migrating Rdb from alpha to itanium

Anthony Silverman — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:49:42 GMT

One important point that I forgot to mention is that we have always, and are still, paying our rdb support contract via HP.

Re: Migrating Rdb from alpha to itanium

abrsvc — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:54:01 GMT

I faced the same issue where I am at the moment and the support contract is for the "current" hardware only. The existance of the support contract may decrease the cost of the move, but it will not eliminate it altogether. This is best discussed with Oracle. The big question will be what happens to the Alpha system. What you decide to do with it may have an impact on the final delta cost as well. In otherwords, commit to a fixed time limit on the Alpha box and apply some credit to the Itanium box.

Keep us posted.

Dan

Re: Migrating Rdb from alpha to itanium

Brad McCusker — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 01:35:36 GMT

I think just about all of our Rdb migration customers had to pay Oracle additional license fees to migrate. You absolutely need to talk to Oracle.

Hein's statement about backup/restore and "easy enough" applies only if you are currently running V7.*.

If you are on an older version, you will need to factor in some additional steps - you are probably going to need to unload/load your data. Depending on the size of your DB, your downtime window, the performance of your Alpha, available disk space and a host of other factors, the actual migration may be tricky.

Slides 39-45 in thsi presentation talk about a Rdb 6.* to Integrity migration I was involved with a couple years ago: http://www.sciinc.com/remotedba/techinfo/tech_presentations/HPTF_2009_vms_migration.pdf

Good luck.

Brad McCusker
Software Concepts International.
www.sciinc.com

Re: Migrating Rdb from alpha to itanium

Steve Schultz_1 — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 12:38:00 GMT

I am planning the same migration, too. The cost for RDB depends on what you currently are licensed for and what hardware (# of cores) you are going to. In my situation there was no cost involved. However, I also needed to migrate BEA MessageQ, which is now owned by Oracle. Even though I had it under support via HP, Oracle said I need to re-purchase the product to migrate it. So, as others have said, you need to talk with Oracle.

Steve