Upgrade L2000

[Guillermo Rossney]

Hi Everyone.

We have an old L2000 Server with four processors 8500 440 mhz.

Our system board is A5191A.

We want upgrade to four 550mhz proccesors..
We have been researching and found that we have two options:

Option 1:
- Replace the system board with a L3000 board
- Add memory carriers
- replace the PA-RISC 8500 440 mhz processors
with four PA-RISC 8600 550 mhz processors

Option 2:
- Replace the system board to a A5191B (Revision B)
- replace the PA-RISC 8500 440 mhz processors
with four PA-RISC 8600 550 mhz processors

With this second options is not necessary the memory carrier so i think it will be cheaper..

One of my question is: processors involved in both options are the same? (A6146A)

Anyone has experienced an upgrade like this?
There is anything getting out from our analysis?

Thanks in advance,

Guillermo

[Torsten.]

The difference between rp5450 and rp5470 (L2000/L3000) is marginal.

The rp5470 is a bit faster, because of different bus structures and higher frequency rate (L2000 runs only 540 MHz ;-).

Best bet will be the rp5470, because end-of-support is 2 years later!

see (page 4)

http://www.hp.com/products1/unix/operating/public_hp-ux_systems_support.pdf

[Guillermo Rossney]

Thanks for your reply, Torsten.

It seems that the best option is upgrade to L3000, but it means a higher cost..

But your point must be considerated..

At this time, my principal concern is if this upgrade (L2000 -> L3000) is "secure". I mean, if it will be "transparent", because we need to ensure that the server will be fully functional after the parts replacement..
I think there is a lower risk with the L2000 revision A -> L2000 revision B..

So, i'm needing some previous experiences on an upgrade like this..

Regards

[Torsten.]

The upgrade is always secure, because it is supported. This not always means it is "transparent by default".

It depends on the base system. In some cases (e.g. old L1000 to L3000) the final system will have different HW pathes and this will result in different device files. In this case HP will provide a special script for adjusting this.

If you get the upgrade from HP, you may get the installation service too. This will ensure a running system after the upgrade - I have seen it many times.

[Matti_Kurkela]

A year or two ago, we were upgrading most of our L1000s and L2000:s to L3000/rp5470 (or in some cases, to "L1500"/rp5430).

The upgrade is "mostly transparent" if your hardware enablement patches are on a reasonable level. Because the IO backplane is changed, some PCI slots will have a different hardware path from before. You may have to export/re-import any volume groups located on external disks, and if you have extra LAN cards, their ID numbers may change, unless you're careful when re-installing the cards after the upgrade.

Because the rp5430/rp5470 (L3000) system board has greater bus speed, there can be a noticeable performance increase in IO-intensive tasks. It also gives you some TwinTurbo PCI slots with more bandwidth.

At least with HP-UX 11.00, there is one trick: seems that in some cases (if your IO configuration is complex enough, perhaps?) the kernel will get very confused when booting the new L3000 board for the first time, and be unable to boot even to the single-user mode (hanging after secondary system loader, somewhere in kernel startup).

This can be avoided by removing (or renaming) both /etc/ioconfig and /stand/ioconfig as the last task before shutting down for the upgrade. After the upgrade, the system will boot into single-user mode: then you enter the command "ioinit -c" and reboot. The ioconfig files will be recreated, avoiding any confusion with old pre-upgrade hardware paths.

[SteveB CR]

With regards to price, the system board for an rp5470 is usually over double the price of the A5191B rp5450 system board. The memory carriers average about $250 each depending on where you buy them.

When doing the hardware installation if you decide not to have HP install this equipment, make sure you set aside a good ammount of time, the first one will be tricky as you have to remove metal from the chassis, remove the power supplies and a handful of screws from the system board itself.

All in all the difference in performance between the rp5450 and rp5470 using 550MHz PA8600 CPU's isn't that large. However if you are going to upgrade to the RP5470 system boards you should look into the higher speed processors, 650-750 and 875MHz options. They're not that expensive and do provide a bit more speed.

Another very cheap option if you decide to go with 550MHz CPU's is not to upgrade to the rp5470, but an upgrade to the L3000 which supports the 550MHz CPU's and the Memory Carrier architecture with higher performance and bandwidth. This is a bit more transparent of an upgrade where the Core IO's are not changed.

I hope this information helps, I've done lots of these upgrades in every different direction, it comes down to what you are looking to spend, versus how long you want to own the server, versus what you expect for performance increases.

Hope this helps a little.
Steve B