Should we migrade the entire environment to AIX from HPUX, and WHY?

[Hanry Zhou]

We are runing DW/Oracle Cluster on 4 HP RX4600 servers, and XP storage. Now, the consulting firm currently supports another core business application running on IBM/AIX pursuade our very up management, and suggests they can migrade HP environment to AIX and IBM storage, and with less maintenance cost. The management seems very much into it. In addtion to the cost, they also feel it'd be better to have one same platform, though there seems no problems to two different apps running on two different platforms.

I don't feel it is good idea, mainly it cause a lot of uncertainties by moving entire system to another platform, including performance uncertainty. If you agree with me, could you please detail out these reasons as for why we should not do that?

Thanks in advance!

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Hanry:

If you ask this in an HP Forum, you'll get one answer. If you ask in an IBM/AIX arena you'll probably get another answer.

*You* should find out what is so apparently attractive to your management. In business, financially sweet arrangements are sometimes offered to gain a foothold with the anticipation of more, long-term business later.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Harry,

Surely the right thing to do is to also ask HP if they could move the other app from AIX to HP-UX - that way your company can _ensure_ its getting the best possible value... rather than just trusting one consulting firms opinion (how much $$$ does the consulting firm make from doing this migration???)

HTH

Duncan

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Reasons why to do the migration to HP-UX:
* Decreased support costs.
* HP support is still excellent

The IBM people are going to say they can do a better job at a lower cost.

Contact HP for a counter offer. You may find they can beat anything IBM has to offer.

Your concerns are quite correct.

SEP

[Emil Velez]

WAnt to save on HPUX maintenance costs.

Move from the rx4400s to Integrity blades..That should be the same or less.

[Hanry Zhou]

The current HP environment could not meet the growing need in processing power and capacity, so we need to upgrade the environment. The management wants to take this opportunity to migrade it over to IBM/AIX&Storage. Since we have another IBM environment, by keeping them all the same vendor they expect the maintanice cost would be lower.

My concerns are:
It takes time to maturize an application running on a particular OS/Platform. This application has already been running on HP for >5 years. It could cause a lot of uncertainties to move it to a different platform.

2nd, the resource here is more on
HP technologies, not too much on IBM.

Please add 3rd, 4th...

to ask HP for counter offer would be a good suggestion...

[SoorajCleris]

Hi,

Its all business.
Best way, contact your HP account support manager for your accout ( if you have support from HP); They will give solution/ what HP can do on this, a counter offer or something else.

* if you want to migrate existing AIX yo HP-UX also .. ;)

Regards,
Sooraj

[dirk dierickx]

that consulting firm is smelling the money, and they want more from your company. it's easy to see they want more business with you and they probably only support or have knowledge of IBM HW. they might have aggresive pricing to get the deal, be sure they don't hike everything up after a few years to make up for losses in the beginning.

[Wim Rombauts]

Well, to be honest, I can understand why migratin to new IBM gear will save yo a lot in maintenance cost ...

But migrating to new HP gear will do so as well.

What's in these rx4600 server ? 4 single-core itaniums ? I bet if you replace these 4 old servers with the bl860 or bl870 blades or some upcoming rx2800 systems, you will certainly do the same, and will easily consolidate additional applications on HP gear.

You should make a good comparison :
Cost of IBM servers, training and migration
copared to.
Cost of HP servers, no training, and less migration, and no bill from the consulting firm.
If your management is healthy, they will certainly favor a cost-effective solution.