11.11 v1 and 11.23 v2 September 2004

[Chris Watson]

I see that 11.23 v2 September 2004 is for itanium AND pa-risc.

If if have installation media for either of the above products should I (or can I) be using 11.23 on my PA-RISC.

How exactly do the two compare?

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Chris:

"Should you" is your choice. "Can-you" will depend on your hardware.

http://www.hp.com/softwarereleases/releases-media2/latest/0512/0512mb.htm

Version 11.23 offers new features over 11.11 although some porting occurs.

Version 11.11 is not due for end-of-life any time sooner than 11.23 based on the current information though:

http://www.hp.com/softwarereleases/releases-media2/history/slide2.html

Regards!

...JRF...

[Alzhy]

IF you are happy with 11.11 AND have no plans on migrating to Itanium platforms in the next 3-5 years - then stick with 11.11.

IF you are happy with 11.11 AND you plan to migrate to the Itanium platform in 3 years or less - then better start upgrading to 11.23 ASAP.

IF you are happy with 11.11 AND you are sticking with PARISC servers AND have a need for the kool new features of 11.23 - then upgrade to 11.23.

Aside from some new and improved tools - most of 11.23's feature upgrades that may be a plus for some deals with upgrades to Veritas Products bundled/offered with the OS. These products include the 4.x releases of Volume Manager (VxVM) and Filesystem (aka VxFS or O/JFS)and Clustering solutions. Those heavy on Veritas usage on HP-UX environments may note that VxVM and Filesystem are stuck at version 3.5. Symantec(Veritas) I gather will have no plans of releasing 4.X products for the 11.11 environment.

As far as performance differences between 11.11 and 11.23 on PARISC platforms -- I do not know.

[Geoff Wild · Accepted solution]

Here's a "HP-UX 11i v2 Operating System Quick Specs" link:

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12079_div/12079_div.HTML


And a brief "what's new":

It appears HP has changed the way we handle the kernel with this release. The core kernel is basically a frozen piece of code. Configurations are created that are applied at boot up or on the fly. Multiple configurations can exist at the same time. Many "tunables" are now dynamic, some even becoming more or less part of the kernel, so they do not need to be changed. The OS manages these parameters automatically. Some drivers can be added and removed on the fly, like CDFS file system. I expect V3 will add even more DLKM products.

Management of HP-UX is also changing. SAM functionality is reduced in this release as new web based tools are taking over these functions. It is expected that SAM will eventually be completely removed. kcweb is the tool used for tuning the kernel. pdweb manages periferal devices and SPB (software package builder). SCM or HP Systems Insight Manager becomes a major component of system administration. parmgr is the tool used for partition management. All have both GUI and command line interfaces.

Presently, when you boot a PA Risc system, you interact with the PDC, BCH and ISL. A new layered boot tool allows for standardization when booting different platforms. An EFI boot services layer sits on top of a SAL (system abstraction layer) which sits on top of a PAL (processor abstraction layer) which talks to the microcode.

Disk layout changes may not directly impact you, but are something you need to be aware of. Besides the LIF, ISL and HP-UX areas there is now a MBR (master boot record. not used), a Partition Table (duplicated at end of disk), an EFI partition and a HP Service Partition. The ISL is no longer used and is now part of the HP-UX area for compatibility reasons.

When you cold install a system, you can choose a security level. Bastille is part of the OS and is run at install time. There are 4 options you can choose from when you install. These are Security Tool Infrastructure installation only, Host-based lockdown, DMZ Manager lockdown or Full DMZ lockdown.

The customer class also covers n-Par information and commands.

Several library changes happening may be of interest to programmers and application administrators. New aC++ support libraries, enhanced math libraries and more.

CDE is being deprecated. It runs through the Aries PA compatibility application and will not be migrated to native mode IA.

Others: Compressed Crash Dump, IPv6, WBEM, OLAR improvements, MxN thread support, lazy loading, Adaptive Address Space (SAS) to ease porting to HP-UX. and more.


I like the dynamic kernel parameters - things like dbc_max_pct and min can be changed on the fly now - no reboot!

Rgds...Geoff

[Bharat Katkar]

Hi Chris,

if have installation media for either of the above products should I (or can I) be using 11.23 on my PA-RISC?
Yes. It's a Combo OS for both PA and IA Systems.

How exactly do the two compare?
Geoff has very nicely explained the same.

Regards,

[Alzhy]

Those are Kool New improvements some of which do not apply to PARISC though which our good friend Mr. Watson.

Personally though - the biggest and most useful features of 11.23 are the provision of current versions of Veritas components - CLustering, VxVM and VxFS (4.1 is now available and may soon be the default VxVM and VxFS/OJFS). These are the promises that were supposed to be the integration of Tru64 UNIX's best features with HP-UX that HP was unable to deliver. Instead, they settled for Veritas products - since the Filesystem JFS/OJFS (which are OEM'd from Veritas VxFS)
and VxVM have long been integrated with the OS and clustering at 11.11 already was viable.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Chris,

First, I recommend against install 11.23 v2 September 2004. It offers enhanced features, but is a dot zero release and you should probably consider a more refined later Core OS release to install.

I think the prior posts clearly indicated the benefits of 11.23.

I would add that if your applications all support it, 11.23 is the better way to go because it will increase the time between this installation and the next upgrade.

Feature example: NFS v4 is not offered on 11i v1 but is on 11i v2. That actually annoys the heck out of me and I've complained to HP on this.

Well, good luck, back to trying to clear some mail queues. The SEP liberation army needs to set some trapped email free.

:-)

SEP