HP-UX vs. Windows

[Elena Leontieva]

Hello,

Our manager has a strong Windows mindset due to her IT background. These days she manages Unix(HP-UX)/Windows/Mass storage environment and is unsure why do we need K460s and N4000s in our data center, - they are much bigger boxes as compared to ProLiant 2500 and 6500 sitting in one rack.
We are running Oracle on HP-UX and Windows. Unix/HP-UX has a better I/O subsystem, better memory management, more reliable ...
At the same time we are looking at cutting support costs.

Every and all thoughts on why we should stay with HP-UX are appreciated.

Also, note that at this point our management feel much comfortable with Windows than Linux on Intel.

Thanks in advance.
Elena.

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

Ask your dba which is easier to deal with and more reliable. My dba looks for work when asked about migration to windows.

HP-UX has been tested by many industry experts and always comes out on top. It is more reliable than Linux and a lot more reliable than Windows.

The PA-Risc architecture outperforms the CISC environment.

You can run oracle on K class servers and get performance comparable to much newer Intel hardware.

HP-UX sets the standard in reliablity and is much easier to secure. Most viruses today target the Windows OS. I have yet to see a widely distributed HP-UX virus, or a means to deliver it.

SEP

[Cheryl Griffin]

Stability of HP-UX. Think about uptime and maintenance costs.

We used to work from HP-UX workstations at our desk, the only time our systems had to be shutdown/rebooted is when the building did their power checks. Rarely were we installing new software.

In other environments I've worked on machines that were Windows NT/2000 based. Every other day, there was yet another MS service pack, windows patch, security update, browser update, application update, etc. MS is high maintenance, a lot of downtime and increased IT support costs especially when the upgrades failed or caused more problems.

[Patrick Wallek]

Well, let's see....

HP-UX ---
1) VERY stable hardware and OS -- can stay up (no reboot required) for MONTHS and YEARS if tuned properly. (try that with windows)

2) Not nearly as many problems with security vulnerabilities (yes there are some but a lot of things can be mitigated without patching).

3) Viruses -- What viruses?

Depending on what you have support on and at what level, there are ways to cut your HP support costs without dropping your service levels.

I have lots of disk sub-systems (like FC10s) and I dropped support on almost ALL individual disks within those, BUT NOT the FC10s themselves. I keep spare disks for the FC10s on hand and can replace them when needed. If I run low on spares, I order more. I saved SEVERAL thousand dollars on support by doing that.

[Jeff_Traigle]

I always love the managers who make decisions based on what they are comfortable with instead of researching what actually works best. They aren't the ones supporting it and need to know the details. They need competent people under them for that. It's one of the main reason why MS continues to spread everywhere despite it's inferiority.

Oh well... I'm biased and wouldn't run most things on Windows, especially Oracle. Why would you want to run an enterprise database on an OS that's going to eat up most of the reources itself? When I took Oracle training a few years back (and granted only Win2k was out at that time), the instructor said you *can* run it on Windows, but you *shouldn't* unless you're doing something very small scale.

You want to cut support costs? Compare the number of UNIX servers vs. Windows servers you need to run a lot of Oracle databases. I'll bet you can manage many fewer servers (thus greatly reducing your support costs) if you take the UNIX route.

Management always seems to say UNIX pros are more costly and use that as an excuse for going to Windows too... but you need fewer of them typically since their systems actually work and don't need the babysitting a Windows environment typically does.

Ok. I'll get off my soapbox now. :)

[Bill Hassell]

I now work in an environment where there are eight K460's with 4 Linux boxes used as backup servers. The K460's have been running 24x7 since 1999 and have just had their first unscheduled reboot this week. The reboot was caused by a disk failure in a Linux server which acts as an NFS server. (not my design) The reboot just reconnected to a different NFS server and production continues... The average uptime for all the servers is 450 days which includes patches and hardware changes.

In contrast, our site also has some 60-70 PC servers (ProLiant, Dell and white boxes) and they are usually rebooted every 20-30 days, mostly for security patching. While they are fairly stable (careful pacthing, good firewall, limited software per server), it takes 4 fulltime people to manage these systems. I also manage a team ot 3 techs that are on the road every day servicing several hundred white box PCs. 80% of the calls are for viruses, spyware and user-caused problems, the rest for failed disks, video cards, monitors, etc. Windows requires a lot more labor to keep running.

Windows is still in it's infancy compared to Unix (about 30 years old these days) and is the subject of massive attacks from not only bored programmers with an ego problem, but now from paid hackers that are trying to infiltrate every PC in the world with spyware and automated robots.

HP-UX is just not attractive to hackers. The hardware is proprietary, the boot sector is difficult to find any details, email (elm, mailx, etc) is immune to virtually any virus, there are excellent tools for hardening the system, etc. In short, it is designed for production without interruption.

It is very common for managers to look at hardware costs rather than the total cost of ownership. And that's a big mistake. It costs money to maintain the equipment but it also costs a lot of money for the labor to keep things running, and it costs money when the machine crashes or goes down due to hardware failures. Sure, you can workaround most of the limitations in Windows when running an Oracle environment, but why bother? HP-UX has been running 64bit since 1997.

[Brian M Rawlings]

Amen, to all of the above.

One thing to add is that, unless you are stuck with apps that require 10.20, there is no real reason to still be running on K-class servers. Sure they still get the job done, but most of them can be replaced with a 2U server, the acquisition and maintenance costs over the next 3 years (2 years in many cases) is less than the mainenance costs alone for the venerated old K-class units.

Modern HW provides some other bennies, such as hot-swap disks and dual hot-swap power supplies (in most new units). The K-series is legendary for their uptime and stability, amazingly high given the single points of failure and the lack of hot-swap anything.

I help people make this change all the time, and show them the 2-year ROI (along with doubling their overall performance, in many cases). Given the increasing maintenance costs on the K-class units, HP basically owes you a brand new, faster server, and has for two or three years. All you have to do is call them to have them come install it.

Oddly enough, this is also becoming true for the older N-class servers as well. Time marches on, and the K-killers are falling prey to smaller, cheaper units in their turn. The ROI is not as simple and self-evident as in the case of the K-class servers, but over 3 years, the cost of ownership analysis can show a complete return on investment on N-class replacements in many cases, with 1.5x - to 2x the horsepower. Amazing.

Regards, --bmr

[Bill Hassell]

I agree with Brian about the K460's. Great boxes in their time but their time is now past. Mine are all scheduled to be replaced by rp24xx boxes which are:

- less than 1/8th the price of the original K460's
- run about 5 to 10 times faster with half the CPU's
- require 1/10th the cooling and power

My K460 boxes have been off hardware support for quite a while as I have two active spares. I will probably adopt the same strategy for the rp24xx's. Run a couple of spares for development and testing, and borrow parts when necessary.

The K460's can easily be purchased on eBay for a few hundred dollars and if performance is currently acceptable, you can load and run 11i at 64bits with no problems other than memory is maxed at 8Gb and processor max = 4. Now your K460's have been completely paid for, and with an rp2405 (aka, A500) going for about $5k from resellers, those box dollars (HP-UX vs Windows) are looking very unimportant now.

[Dave Olker]

What an excellent thread!

I agree with all of the above, and just wanted to comment on a couple of things.

In the datacenter where my hands-on and customer duplication systems reside, I support 5-6 HP-UX servers that fit in a single rack with room to spare. Most of these are rx2600's, which are 2U high and destroy other systems from a performance standpoint. My colleague manages the 6 Windows boxes we use for problem duplication and testing.

Even though we put these systems through massive amounts of pain, my HP-UX systems have been stable and running without interruption for months. My poor colleague is constantly being badgered by Site IT because he hasn't installed the latest 17 MS Windows security patches (from last week) and thus IT is going to remove his boxes from the corporate network because of fears they will infect other production systems.

No one in IT has ever contacted me about my HP-UX boxes about potentially affecting other systems or being a bad corporate network citizen, unlike the MS Windows boxes.

Again, my HP-UX boxes sit very nicely in a single rack, punish the Windows boxes from a performance and stability stand point, and take a couple hours a month from me to administer. Try getting the same statements from my Windows colleague...

Dave

[Brian M Rawlings]

In the interests of fair coverage, maybe we should open this up to the denizens of the dark side, by posting a link to this question in the Windows forum.

While I am an unabashed HP-UX guy and part-time Windows hater/user, and I understand that this thread is mainly to provide ammo for keeping the HP-UX OS and equipment, it would be interesting to see if anyone with a pro-Windows, anti-UNIX bias can articulate the things that Windows has over Unix.

Presumably there are many people who swing both ways, who monitor both this HP-UX forum and the Windows forum(s), and who understand the plusses and minuses associated with each discipline. It is interesting that none of them have elected to come to the defense of the Windows side.

Elena, care to post a link over there, and see what other views we get on the topic? Presuming that we can keep it above the Jr. High level ("Oh yeah?"), it might be useful.

Regards, --bmr

[D Block 2]

Elena,

re: cutting support costs

If you plan on growing your Storage, then you might look into faster I/O on newer hardware.. using 2G FibreChannel HP cards into a FC switch, into FC Mass Storage. The ROI is worth the speed of transaction response-time for Oracle.

If you plan on cutting costs with ProLiant equipment, you might try using VMWARE Linux - having 2 Linux OS running at the same time. But invest in maximum memory on your ProLiant.

If you want to save on floor space, might think about Server Migration to larger servers that can have multiple OSs that are h/w isolated, Hard-Partitions. The CIO loves to hear about server migration and consolidation into fewer cabinets and less hardware maintenace charges.

Here's the bottom line: speed of transactions. If you need reliable and fast I/O, the only choice is Oracle on HP-UX as compared to Windows (or even Linux).

One other choice might be Linux Clustering using Oracle RAC, but keep in mind, Linux on a ProLiant that is max'ed out with I/O, will have performance problems as compared to the big iron HP PA-RISC servers (rpxxxx).

[Gerard Leclercq]

In the the small company where I work, there is about 140 PCs managed by one full time administrator.
I manage myself 60 hpux workstations, but about 10% of my time ...

All our Oracle databases are on hpux servers.

So we know there is a big difference.

The main problem with Windows is that it does not manage correctly the memory. To avoid this problem, one put a lot of memory in the machine.

Gerard.

[dirk dierickx]

Your manager is a fool. Sure, the current trend today is to cut costs by throwing out those RISC boxes, which cost an arm and a leg. But replacing them with Windows is *NOT* they way to go. What you want to have is the same unix environment without the costs. This is where the intel machines running Linux/BSD come in place. The latests machines are so much faster and although they might be less reliable you can buy 4 or more boxes for the price of one risc box, put them in a cluster or in case of oracle something like RAC and all should be well.
You should forget about windows, for all the arguments made in the previous posts.

[Rick Garland]

1st off, you are dealing with UNIX folks here, our decision will be somewhat biased but for good reason. Winblows does not cut it!

There is no doubt that winblows now controls the user desktops. How much longer remains to be seen with Linux able to do most (if not ALL) of the tasks that winblows can do.

Winblows has some uses in the data center. What I see most of is doing DNS and sendmail gateway. Beyond that I see nothing but trouble for winblows. It cannot handle a big Oracle database, small ones winblows does OK with.

Essentially if you are doing major, mission critical applications you will encounter more problems and downtime using winblows.

(I suspect your manager is looking to cut costs. There is no doubt that a winblows system is cheaper up front but the ROI is much better on a UNIX system.)

[Dave Wherry]

I am very much in agreement with what the others have said. Unix is the choice for performance, managability and stability. That of course comes with a price. You truly do get what you pay for.

You can certainly get a Windows solution at a lower purchase price. Then you need to think about the managment expense and what down time costs your company. The ROI discussion has already been brought up and Unix wins.

It sounds as if your manager is concerned with the costs of those maintenance contracts. HP is not different than any other vendor. They raise the price of support on older systems because it costs them money to keep techs trained and stock older parts. They push you to new systems which come with warranty coverage included. You may need to uplift that coverage but, it's usually still cheaper than the coverage on the old systems.

The space those old system takes up is another problem you mentioned. A K460 is 17U high. Compared to a four processor K460 you can get comparable or better performance with a single processor rp2405 or an rx1600. And, each of those servers are 1U high. As mentioned earlier you can also look at the larger systems which will allow you to scale up or out with either discrete systems or partitioning. Space problem laid to rest.

One other item. You can move into a new rp system now which solves the current problems. You then have the option of upgrading these in the future with the PA-8900 when it comes out or going to Itanium. Or, you could move to Itanium now (rx line) running UX with all of the advantages previously mentioned. Or, if Windows is truly a better fit for any of your applications, run Windows on Itanium with better performance than those ProLiants.