HELP! HP vs AIX

[Dan Matlock_1]

I am currently fighting a battle at my company as the HP guy. There are others here who are pro-IBM and want to take my HP budget and buy more AIX servers. Unfortunetly for me, they are saying that HP PA-RISC is going away and therefore HP UNIX future is uncertain!!! They are stating that when other companies start shutting down chip production, the OS is not far behind it. What can I do to stop this...need ammo to counter the IBM brainwashers. Obviously we are a mix shop, and they want all the toys! We run oracle and sybase......

[Alan Meyer_4 · Accepted solution]

sure. PA-RISC is shutting down but Itanium is ramping up. Also, from experience here in our mixed shop, HP support is far superior that IBM.

[Robert-Jan Goossens_1]

Hi,

Check this link.

http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/direction.html

Regards,
Robert-Jan

[Mel Burslan]

Your best line of defense would be is the uncertainity of the future of AIX, as IBM lines up all its guns behind Linux. When was the last time AIX had a major revision upgrade with feature enhancements ? Does anyone remember ? Yes, it will be a sad day when they roll out the last PA-RISC powered system down the production line but, IA64 (a.k.a. Itanium) architecture is not looking bad at all as a replacement platform. And since you are buying new equipment, you can jump on the bandwagon from now.

[Marvin Strong]

While they are going to phase out PA-RISC, I think they are going to continue to sell PA-RISC through 06 and support it until 2011.
At least last I read a while back that was the plan. And they may have changed that plan.

Simply moving to a superior chip set, is no reason to claim that HP Unix future is uncertain. Computers are constantly evolving, and HP has spent alot of money in the Itanium arena, so I would doubt that they are going to abandon HP Unix for Itanium.

Also with the newer servers, ugrading from PA-RISC to Itanium should be a simple in box change if memory serves from some other information I have read recently. Clearly there is no reason to fear the future of HP Unix.

[Mohanasundaram_1]

Hi Dan,

AS others indicated, the end of PA-RISC does not mean end of HP-UX. The Itanium boxes are getting stable now with the newer firmware versions.

I have worked with Itanium midrange servers for the past 1 year and can confidently say that most of the initial problems they had, have been ironed out.

HP-UX is already available on Itanium platform and is doing good. I am sure IBM will point out lot of issues/articles about Itanium, but the issues were during the initial stages of Itanium and presently the systems are reliable as your PA-RISC systems.

With regards,
Mohan.

[Rick Garland]

AIX is the OS that is planned to go away. IBM is planning to phase out AIX in favor of Linux (with AIX extensions).

With HP you will still have ther HPUX in addition to the Linux.

As mentioned earlier, the support for HPUX is far superior to IBM's support. This forum is just 1 example - and this is a user forum at that. What does AIX have in comparison?

IBM has been losing money on their UN*X support and services for some time now. They are trying to push into running and managing companies IT infrastructure. This means that the jobs of the UNIX SAs is questionable as these companies start outsourcing to IBM. And then IBM outsources overseas.

For databases, Oracle has a very small install base on AIX. Oracle does not like AIX. Oracle is not compiled on AIX - it is ported.

[Geoff Wild]

HP-UX isn't going away - too big of a market share for HP.

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/hp/hpux-faq/section-8.html

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/hp/hpux-faq/section-9.html


And "HP-UX 11i v2 on HP Integrity servers delivers enterprise UNIX at up to 20% lower TCO than IBM AIX with p-series and SUN Solaris with SUN Fire servers. Don't get left behind! ":

http://www.hp.com/products1/unix/operating/hpux11i9m.html?jumpid=in_11i9m_integrity-home


Rgds...Geoff

[Steven E. Protter]

HP is migrating to a new hardware architecture, based on Intel built Itanium chips.

HP-UX isn't going anywhere.

SEP

[Hakan Aribas]

We are a new company (3 years old). At the beginning we evaluated the candidates: IBM pSeries, HP Integrity and Sun, and we chose HP because of support quality and high performance of Integrity servers. I am happy now for this right decision! :-)

[Dan Matlock_1]

Thanks for the feedback!!! This info will help me counter the aix proposals.

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Why not fire some of that FUD back?

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/cache/107848-0-0-0-121.html?ERL=true

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/cache/115737-0-0-0-121.html?ERL=true

HTH

Duncan

[Dan Matlock_1]

I am now on the offensive, and now one more thing: The AIX person is pushing a IBM partioned server and is stating that "IBM's p-series servers have better partitioning features than HP's"! Is there truth to any of this...

[Dan Matlock_1]

thanks

[Sorrel G. Jakins]

Nobody has ever been fired for recommending IBM ...

but they should have been!

[Rick Garland]

The acronym for AIX

(A)nother (I)bm (X)crement

[MarkSyder]

Nice one Rick. An ICL person once told me it was Always Interesting eXcuses.

Actually, I quite like AIX (but prefer HP-UX).

Mark Syder (like the drink but spelt different)

[Rick Garland]

Hi Mark:

No intentions on offending anyone. And you are right, AIX is not all that bad. Could be better though.

My big hangup is the attitude.

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Given AIX's bizarre mixture of standard text config files, stanza based config files and binary config through an object database, and given the many other bizarre methods of managing the system which seem to have come from the deranged mind of a mainframe systems programmer, I always thought of AIX as standing for

*A*IX *I*sn't UNI*X*

Cheers

Duncan

[Florian Heigl (new acc)]

Dan, LPAR is about the same as VPAR, with a nice GUI added. µLPAR (require AIX 5.3 and PowerV CPUs) is definitely better, as it has a much better granularity (down to cpu cycles) than both other solutions, but has been on the market for only a year, and most shops *can't yet afford* to run AIX 5.3 for support and quality issues.

In general, the quality of IBM's support is horrible, and on production systems one is facing a contant up- and downgrading between ML, EFIX and APAR. The patch quality is 'not really convincing', and while the hardware is fast, the quality is not always convincing, which is bad when adding the fact that many ibm customer engineers don't even know how to handle the online-replacement features of the OS.

[Geoff Wild]

Rick - do you have a link to a page that backs up your statement about IBM dropping AIX? I would like to see that - as it could determine if we continue supporting AIX at our site.

Thanks...Geoff

[Rick Garland]

Been lots of scuttlebutt since then but what can be said is the the version 5.2L is the AIX with Linux extensions. This is expected to continue with latter versions. IBM has previously announced that they were discontinuing support for 4.x versions.

Here is something 2 yrs old that has a link to IBM and quotes from IBM.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Page/document/v4/sub/MarketingPage?user_URL=http://www.globetechnology.com%2Fservlet%2FArticleNews%2Ftech%2FRTGAM%2F20030129%2Fgtiblin%2FTechnology%2FtechBN%2F&ord=1127749348855&brand=globetechnology&force_login=true

Here is a IBM site that talks about the upcoming 5L versions.
http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/aix/