Replacing K570s

[Geetha_1]

We have three HP 9000/K570s (hp-ux 11.0 64-bit with EMC symmetrix)running Oracle 9i databases. We also have a high availibility environment with MC/Service Guard. We need to replace the aging hardware.

It would help me greatly if any of you have replaced aging K570 hardware. I want to know what options did you all look at to replace K570/EMC hardware and what did you narrow it down to & why?

Thanks!

[Leon Allen · Accepted solution]

I'm in a similar situation to yourself, needing to replace ageing PA-RISC servers (L-1000)

Tips I've had todate include:

1) your decision will be largely driven by your applications (application compatibility is important); AND cost.

2) Never under-estimate your in-house expertise (ie if you only have hp-ux in your shop, then hp-ux should be important)

3) PA-RISC is on the way out.

4) Takeup of itanium has not been stellar.

5) Majority of Oracle installations are now in Windows environment (source: Oracle Corp).

Bearing these (and other) factors in mind, our own replacement path appears to be:
* XENON duo core processors (with EMT)

* Windows server 2003 64-bit (a common denominator with all our applications - and we have in-house expertise in this area)

* Because of the cost of going to processor based licensing on multicore processors, and the inroads SQLServer has already made, we are planning a database consolidation - to SQL Server 2005 (express and Std ed). (Yes, chucking Oracle out - too expensive. So much for our investment in Oracle licensing. But it is the trend, and sqlserver 2005 is considered an 'enterprise' class RDBMS)

* AND Dell Servers are very keen to get a foot hold in the door.

Bottom line is, in our experience, the need to replace servers is an opportunity for a quantum change.

Regardless of your choice, expect significant gains in performance - preliminary indications here are up to a 10 fold improvement in performance when running on a new database on a current generation processor.

Hope this causes some debat! :-)

[Yang Qin_1]

1. Ignite "clone" will be easier if you new harware allows you to use K570's Ignite image to rebuild the server. The things you need to do afterwards is to "vgexport vg_other_than_vg00" on the new server and then map EMC device files with the ones on K570 on the new server and then run vgimport -m vg##.map

However, as K570 is an old server, you may applied lots of patches, upgrade from 10.20 ... in this case you may want to

2. Build new server from HPUX CD to have a clean environment. But you have to be carefull about all those configurations for the OS and/or for your applications running on the old server. As it is an old server, nobody can tell exactly which files are modified with which value and what softwares have been installed, how those softwares were configured... You will need some time to figure them out before the cut-over.

You will need to map device files and import VGs of course.

3. In both case mentioned above, you can always use a temp IP on the new server or better isolate it from your network (use LAN console to access it).

4. You may need some spare (EMC) disks, so you can restore the data from K570 to the new server.Test everything, before the cutover. Involve all your application users in the test phase (so that if there will be something wrong during the cutover, you will not be blamed :-)).

5. Have a good full backup before cutover. If you use EMC BCV, establish, synchronize BCV when all applications stopped on K570. split BCV before you shutdown K570. Split R2 from R1 if you use SRDF. In case your vgimport failed (normally it will not happen, but who knows?) you have backups, BCV and R2 you can easily restore the data when needed.

6. You can also re-structure your filesystem on the new server, if business allow you to spend time to restore data from backup during the cutover.

Yang

[Jesse Dougherty]

The big factor is cost. You can get the top of the line HP-UX server for hundreds of thousands dollars or you can go a few levels beyond the K570's and only spend a fraction of that. We do a lot of upgrades and it seems that it all really boils down to price. What you probably need is a base line starting point. Without really knowing your configurations on the K570's I compared it with some N4000's servers that are commonly found at any HP reseller.


9000/K570 w/ 6 x 180MHz CPU's = Transactions per minute (estimate) 21,350
4GB Memory
1 x 4GB Boot Drive

9000/N4000 w/ 8 x 550MHz CPU's = Transactions per minute (estimate) 60,000
4GB Memory
1 x 4GB Boot Drive
$4,000.00

Thanks
Jesse Dougherty
Cypress Technology, Inc
Re-Sellers of HP 3000/9000 products

[Geetha_1]

Leon,
I agree, PA-RISC processors are on their way out. After looking at the market, we are looking at replacing them with the HP Integrity rx4640 boxes (Itanium 2) processors. We have invested heavily in Oracle and Oracle Licensing is not an issue for us. As we have in-house hp-ux experience, we are leaning to an Integrity solution running Linux or HP-UX. We are looking at HP Storage Arrays on the market and MSA 1000 looks as if it will do the job and be a cost-effective solution.

I wanted to hear from my peers in the HP world about their choices etc. Thanks for your input!

I am hoping some more will join in on the debate.

Geetha.

[bob lucido]

test

[Leon Allen]

Hi Getha,

Yes, we considered the linux / hp-ux question to. We wanted 64-bit architecture, and corresponding 64-bit OS. HP-UX and Linux 64 both comply (as does Windows 64). But one of our corporate applications (GIS) is not supported on itanium, and does not run on Linux 64. Shuffle that around, and for us, out pops Windows-64 (again).

All the best!

[Geetha_1]

Thanks! That makes perfect sense in your environment. Application compatibility is the key.
Geetha.

[Geetha_1]

Thanks Leon! That makes perfect sense in your environment. Application compatibility is the key.
Geetha.