Virtualizing rp7420 w/Itanium Upgrade

[kamiller42]

I was handed an old rp7420 server. It's running in production right now and is the only copy of an existing server solution. I was tasked with saving the server, which means make a clone of it or virtualize it. Re-building is an option, i.e.  re-installing software on a different (new or refurb) machine, but is very risky.

I have a Linux background, but I am not that familiar with HP UX or HP Enterprise solutions. 

The desire is to virtualize this machine and make it independent of this older hardware.

Is it possible to virtualize this server? What are the options? Is the link below the best route? Are there people I can call who can do this, or is HP the best contact?

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/servers/hp-ux.html?compURI=1509789

[Dennis Handly]

You probably want to look into Containers to port your PA-RISC applications.

Unfortunately a link on your URL doesn't work.

[Bill Hassell]

The simplest solution is to purchase another rp7420 and use your Ignite backup tape to clone the system. (you are running Ignite backups regularly, correct?). This will require the least amount of knowledge and experience to complete. I am assuming that you just want a backup system in case the production system goes down. You do need to document and test all the steps needed to switch to the backup system, things like IP address changes, copying or moving the active data to the backup system, etc.

Virtualizing is a very large task requiring special software ($$$), a machine to host the virtual system and a lot of knowledge. Do you have any existing HP-UX virtual host systems? They would have to be PA-RISC with enough capacity to add another virtual OS. There is NO advantage in using virtualization if you don't have any current virtual machines. And no, you can't virtualize HP-UX onto Intel platforms with VMware, etc.

Now the rp7410 is indeed old, more than a decade old. But new hardware is all Itanium, aka Integrity. The chipset is completely incompatible with PA-RISC. So without building a complete new server and installing all the applications and databases, there is no way for the existing code to run. 

There is an exception: HP-UX offers a container solution (no $$$ needed) for PA-RISC systems. HP-UX for Itanium servers has a built-in PA-RISC translator to allow the executables to run on IA64 hardware. But the first consideration is CPU usage on the current platform. Run the command top and see what kind of load currently exists. This load will dictate how many processors you'll need for the container to maintain current performance. If you don't have any Itanium machines, there are only two products: rx2800 (a 2U pizza box server) and blades. And like virtualization, some detailed knowledge is required to deploy the container.