estimate of the life time RX6600

[yazidhani]

hello

i have  serve RX6600  & rx2600   & eva4400 since  2010  work  24/24h .

 my question : lifespan  for rx6600    & rx26600   & eva4400 .

just estimate of the life time   !!

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

Lifetime? Probably 100 years.

But you don't decide to replace a modern system due to years in service. You look at whether it is performing satisfactorily. New machines are smaller, much faster and take much less power. Older machines will require more expensive maintenance (disks, memory, power supplies) as the parts are harder to find. There are dozens of really old HP-UX boxes (like the K-series) that are still running production jobs. In many cases, the hardware is so old, that it cannot run the latest version of HP-UX. And more importantly, there are no security patches available for current problems. But if the machines are on isolated networks, they will run fine. And they will use a lot of power and air conditioning.

So replacement should be based on the usage of the machine and the cost to operate it, as well as the cost for upgrade. Note that the cost for the upgrade must include the changes needed to accomodate new versions of HP-UX. The replacement for the rx6600 and rx2600 would be an rx2800 (versions i1, i2, i4, and i6) but these models require the latest version of HP-UX. And that version may not be compatible with the current versions of your applications and databases. So replacing the hardware now becomes a migration project.

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Bill has told you practically what you need to know.

The other thing to consider is if you can still get (reliable) support for these systems when they do fail. Take a look at this matrix here:

https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/getpdf.aspx/4aa4-7673enw.pdf

You'll see the rx2660 and rx6600 listed in there. You'll see that both systems are past their minimum support commitment of 5 years past their obsolescence date (when HP stopped selling them). So both are reaching the point where HPE may no longer offer you a support contract (you will have to contact your local HPE rep to find out). Of course some 3rd party may offer you a contract, but you always have to consider how reliable those 3rd party support contracts are (most of the vendors in this space get their spare parts off eBay!) I guess you can only answer that question by understanding how important these systems are to your business.

Same applies for the EVA4400 - that is also way pat it's 5 year minimum support commitment.

From a more theoretical standpoint, ever heard of the bathtub curve of product failure rates? If you're really intersted in this stuff, here's two articles digging into this from an ex-HP reliability engineer:

https://www.weibull.com/hotwire/issue21/hottopics21.htm

https://www.weibull.com/hotwire/issue22/hottopics22.htm