New! HP-UX 11i v2 for HP 9000

[Olivier Decorse]

Hello everybody.
Not a question, of course : just to give an information i read :
"New! HP-UX 11i v2 for HP 9000" on :
http://www.hp.com/products1/unix/operating/hot_topic_unix.html
"Customers who want to run a common release will upgrade their HP 9000 systems to HP-UX 11i v2 and their HP Integrity systems to HP-UX 11i v2 with the HP-UX 11i v2 update 2. "

May be you already know it ...

Olivier.

[Steven E. Protter]

Yep heard about that at HP-World, thats where it was announced.

Seems to be a logical upgrade and a lot of applications are receiving paper certification.

One of many cool aspects is that it doesn't necessitate a relink/recompile on 11i v1 binaries.

Realistically, because we are a cold install shop we won't use it until our next hardware upgrade cycle in early 2006.

I have access to a couple of old D boxes and this release will probably work with it. Thats where I'll start when the media is available.

SEP

[Pete Randall]

One caution - the initial version is not supported with VPARS! That support will be appearing in 2005.


Pete

[Dave Olker]

And now, a blatant plug for NFS...

We're introducing two new features in 11i v2 update 2 for NFS:

1. Forcible NFS Unmounts
2. Direct I/O

Forcible NFS Unmounts is pretty much what it sounds like - it allows you to forcibly unmount an NFS filesystem in the event that the filesystem becomes unusable, either because the server is down, network is down, etc. This feature will allow you to issue the "umount -f " command and forcibly remove the filesystem from the client without having to reboot the client.


Direct I/O is a feature that is often requested by database companies like Oracle, Sybase, Informix, etc. These applications like to manage their own cache and they typically don't want buffer cache in their way. VxFS filesystems have offered direct I/O for just such a reason for some time, but this feature has never been available on NFS until 11i v2u2.

The "forcedirectio" mount option will cause the NFS requests to bypass buffer cache on the client, thereby eliminating read-ahead and write-behind semantics, which is exactly what database applications want.


In any case, I figured I'd throw that out in the interest of raising awareness of these new features and building anticipation for 11iv2u2.

I'll bet you can't wait to get your hands on it now, right? :)

Regards,

Dave

[Geoff Wild · Accepted solution]

Here's some information I received from our HP account rep:

---------------------

11i V2 is the next release of 11i, coming initially for Itanium servers only. A PA Risc processor version will be released late this year called 11.23PI.

It appears HP has changed the way we handle the kernel with this release. The core kernel is basically a frozen piece of code. Configurations are created that are applied at boot up or on the fly. Multiple configurations can exist at the same time. Many "tunables" are now dynamic, some even becoming more or less part of the kernel, so they do not need to be changed. The OS manages these parameters automatically. Some drivers can be added and removed on the fly, like CDFS file system. I expect V3 will add even more DLKM products.

Management of HP-UX is also changing. SAM functionality is reduced in this release as new web based tools are taking over these functions. It is expected that SAM will eventually be completely removed. kcweb is the tool used for tuning the kernel. pdweb manages periferal devices and SPB (software package builder). SCM or HP Systems Insight Manager becomes a major component of system administration. parmgr is the tool used for partition management. All have both GUI and command line interfaces.

Presently, when you boot a PA Risc system, you interact with the PDC, BCH and ISL. A new layered boot tool allows for standardization when booting different platforms. An EFI boot services layer sits on top of a SAL (system abstraction layer) which sits on top of a PAL (processor abstraction layer) which talks to the microcode.

Disk layout changes may not directly impact you, but are something you need to be aware of. Besides the LIF, ISL and HP-UX areas there is now a MBR (master boot record. not used), a Partition Table (duplicated at end of disk), an EFI partition and a HP Service Partition. The ISL is no longer used and is now part of the HP-UX area for compatibility reasons.

When you cold install a system, you can choose a security level. Bastille is part of the OS and is run at install time. There are 4 options you can choose from when you install. These are Security Tool Infrastructure installation only, Host-based lockdown, DMZ Manager lockdown or Full DMZ lockdown.

The customer class also covers n-Par information and commands.

Several library changes happening may be of interest to programmers and application administrators. New aC++ support libraries, enhanced math libraries and more.

CDE is being deprecated. It runs through the Aries PA compatibility application and will not be migrated to native mode IA.

Others: Compressed Crash Dump, IPv6, WBEM, OLAR improvements, MxN thread support, lazy loading, Adaptive Address Space (SAS) to ease porting to HP-UX. and more.

--------------------

Now, does anyone know which parameters in the kernel will now be dynamic?

Rgds...Geoff

PSS: I wish you couls turn swap off on the fly "sans reboot".

[Don Morris_1]

Here's what I found kctune (11.23) showing as dynamic that don't show as dynamic (or don't exist) on 11.11.

aio_listio_max
aio_max_ops
aio_monitor_run_sec
aio_prio_delta_max
aio_proc_thread_pct
aio_proc_threads
aio_req_per_thread
alwaysdump
dbc_max_pct
dbc_min_pct
dontdump
dump_compress_on
enable_idds
executable_stack
fs_symlinks
intr_strobe_ics_pct
ioforw_timeout
ksi_alloc_max
max_acct_file_size
max_thread_proc
maxdsiz
maxdsiz_64bit
maxssiz
maxssiz_64bit
msgmnb
ncdnode
nfile
nflocks
nkthread
nproc
pagezero_daemon_enabled
physical_io_buffers
scsi_max_qdepth
secure_sid_scripts
semmsl
shmmni
st_san_safe
vxfs_ifree_timelag

I'd note that physical_io_buffers is obsolete in future releases by the way.

Those looking for maxswapchunks - that got obsoleted in 11.22, as did shmem (SysV Shmem is now either part of the kernel or not - there's isn't a tunable).

[Olivier Decorse]

Closed!