Itanium 2

[Mike Fisher_5]

I'VE READ THAT:

1] HP will stop "making" servers with PA-RISC chips from spring 2004
2] HP-UX 11i Version 1.6 will work on both Itanium & PA-RISC
3] From the system managers standpoint -
She will not be able to tell which chip is in the box

SO:

Which conclusion below is right?

Either A]
Any 3rd-party application that will work with HP-UX 11i Version 1 on PA-RISC
will chug away happily on
HP-UX 11i Version 1.6 with Itanium 2

Or B]
I should start signing myslf as
Mike "root vegetable" Fisher

[Pete Randall]

B


Pete

[John Bolene · Accepted solution]

A Rutabaga?

Apps will work happily either 32 or 64 bit.

The Itanium can boot either Windows, HPUX, or Red Hat linux. I have seen it done all running Oracle in a 2 machine cluster environment. Take one machine away (power fail) and Oracle is happy to process all requests on the other box.

[Pete Randall]

Mike,

Seriously,

1) I believe I've heard that the PA-RISC line will continue on much longer than that.

2) I also believe this to be true.

3) That's the goal.

So your conclusion would be A.


Pete

[Pete Randall]

Mike,

Sorry - I got (and continue to get) confused on the release numbers.


Pete

[Mike Fisher_5]

JB:
Yup Swede & Turnip roasted in the juices of some dead animal

James:
That link doesnt takes me to an index
Can't spot any Itanium there

Pete:
Varsion number was gonna be 1.6
But that was an HP marketing guy talking

CONCLUSIONS

1] HP = SNAFU :)
2] It's a bit of A] & a bit of B]
3] Stick to a well balanced diet

Mike "meat, 2 veg & a Guinness, but easy on the meat & 2 veg" Fisher

[James Murtagh]

Hi Mike,

The link should be :

http://www.hp.com/products1/unix/operating/infolibrary/index.html

If in still doesn't work....

http://www.hp.com
--> software
--> hp-ux
--> information library (right of page)

Regards,

James.

Aside - And what happened to my previous post? This has happened once to often to be down to coincidence and as it was around for a good few minutes I assume it wasn't "lost" by the OS on the back end.

[Steven E. Protter]

I do not believe that 1 is true. PA-RISC still provides substantial advantages, even over Itanium.

2, I have heard is true.

3 is not true either. The hardware interface and way SCSI is done is different in Itanium.

I don't think HP is going to abandon PA-RISC at all. They surely won't if the acceptance of Itanium 2 is as luke warm as Itanium the original.

Item A is correct.

As far as root vegatables go, I like carrots.

SEP

[Pete Randall]

James,

I noticed that, too. Obviously, both Mike and I responded to it and then it vanished. Quite disturbing!!!


Pete

[Mike Fisher_5]

James n Pete
I'm coming to the conclusion that it's a human problem

[James Murtagh]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for updating the forum issues thread, I now see that Steven has had the problem too. Perhaps a bit over-paranoid on my part, I was racking my brain to think of anything that be considered HP only in my response. Still, the important thing was you got a chance to read the post.

Regards,

James.

[Mike Fisher_5]

I've just looked here

http://www.hp.com/products1/unix/operating/choice/hpux_itanium.html
Pick the bones out of that !!

It's about Version 2
It tells you what it's good for
but not what it's NOT good for

Mike "underwhelmed, but not surprised" Fisher

[doug mielke]

I'm not normally a sceptic, but I can see no way that the same os will work on risc and itainuim, there will have to be different versions, or a conversion that will certainly harm performance of one chip or the other.

We've elected to replace all our servers this year with current PA-Risc, to buy us time until Itanium, ( or the next slick chip) matures.

Opinions?
Can Intel match the reliability of the HP risc?

[Pete Randall]

Doug,

Opinions? I've got millions of them!!

We're headed (I hope) in a similar direction. I'm not ready to jump on the IA64 bandwagon just yet, so we've been working on getting our RISC boxes updated. With a little blessing from the budget gods, next year will put us in a good postion to wait it out.


Pete

[John Bolene]

It will be exactly like Microsoft OS.

When you install, it looks at the hardware and decides what needs to be loaded.

Using either an Intel or AMD cpu for MS causes different code to be loaded to support the different cpu.

You can't take a MS OS disk drive from an AMD system and put it on an Intel system and get it to boot.

The same OS can support RISC and Itanium!

Itanium was also planned to support Tru64 Alpha OS and MPE (if the versions of OS were fixed to make it so). But these OS's will go the way of the dinosaurs with parts of them being included into HPUX.

[Steven E. Protter]

I verify that I SAW James' initial post, without the vanishing commentary when I made my original post.

I understand that the next 11i Release will be one release that runs on PA-RISC or Itanium. Obviously the install will run a little differently under the hood.

This provices significant advantages:

A qualified PA-RISC HP-UX admin such as myself can deal the Itanium issues with a higher degree of confidence. The commands will be available, even if ioscan looks a little different, it will be there.

It provides HP the flexibility to move with the market. If clustering these Itanium boxes is a way to provide superdome like power at a better price, then migration will be a snap.

If Itanium fails, HP still has a great OS and can support the large customers that went out to the bleeding edge.

What it does not deal with though is where Oracle and others think the market is going.

Because the license fees are neglible, Oracle believes that Linux and Linux clustering is the future. They just put out a magazine with all kinds of warm and fuzzy storeis about how they got I/O fixes done faster and then gave the to the major Linux distributors and how they were integrated into the next kernel.

It was an impressive set of stories. Linux has the power of millions of developers writing improvements. Linus Torvald, who controls kernel development has recently quit his full time job and is now working full time on the kernel.

It works pretty well now for a part time project.

HP-UX has significant advantages over Linux. Ignite is something I wish I had for my Linux Servers. LVM with mirror/ux is a much better way in my opinion to manage storage.

But the hardware costs more, and the advanced features cost more.

Where the market goes is quite interesting. I nervously think PA-RISC and HP-UX still have a bright future, but I'm learning hard on the Linux side as well.

SEP

[Mike Fisher_5]

So that's why the OS licensing has moved to
"per CPU"?
Because future CPU's wil be able to run a bunch of different OS's?

i.e. HP ain't gonna be able to make chunks on PA-RISC based processors because if they continue to try they'll lose market share

[Pete Randall]

And per CPU sticker shock gave rise to ICOD and Utility pricing!


Pete

[Mike Fisher_5]

James:
If I were you I would stay Mr Paranoid :)

SEP & JB:
The opposite of the Monkees famous one

JB:
That word was uncalled for

Dougie & Pete:
That's the advice my clients are now going to get
In essence...

Hooooooooold on

[Steven E. Protter]

JB: It will be exactly like Microsoft OS.

I sure as heck hope HP does a better job.

Ewwwwwww! Bloatware!

That is a frigtening thing to say.

This is at most a 1 point post.

SEP

[doug mielke]

I had no idea windows was smart enough to tell the difference between AMD and Intel.

My biggest fear of going to Intel is the expectation from management that all my support would then come from

1-(800) RE-BOOT
or
www.reloados.com

[Gregory Fruth]

1) I recall some HP whitepaper saying that they have plans for
keeping PA-RISC around through 2007 or so, though
presumably at a reduced effort level (if they can get
Itanium off the ground).

2) HP-UX 11i v1.5, v1.6 and v2.0 (aka 11.20, 11.22 and 11.23,
respectively) are for Itanium only. I recall reading that v2.0
was going to be the PA-RISC/Itanium merge but evidently
it's been put off until v3.0 or later.

3) That's the plan.

Conclusion A should be changed from "Any 3rd-party..."
to "Many 3rd-party ...". Some classes of PA-RISC
applications WON'T work on Itanium. We're talking about
binary code compatibility here. At the source code level
a recompile ought to take care of it. See:

http://www.hp.com/products1/unix/operating/infolibrary/whitepapers/WP_binary_comp_2_final.pd

[Mike Fisher_5]

Thanks Gregory

Your conclusion & link:
V useful

Seven years on the forum...
Impressed

[Dave Wherry]

The PA-8800 RISC chip is due out late this year. The PA-8900 chip is due out late 2004. So that eliminates rumor A. RISC servers will be available well beyond the spring of 2004.
If history repeats itself, these chips will be late anyway which just pushes their life spans out further.
Of course HP wants every one to move to Itanium. It's very expensive to maintain two chip lines and HP has committed to Itanium. However, current and upcoming RISC chips will continue to run for many years to come. Well beyond their end of sale dates. Just look at some of the posts from users running K, D and other older class systems. They are still doing the job.
Of course, at some point HP will essentially force everyone off of the older RISC chips by making maintenance costs prohibitive and parts availability questionable. All vendors do that. It's how they move you to new technology and reduce their costs of having to stock parts and keep techs trained on the old gear.
As for Itanium, look at the performance improvements from Itanium to Itanium 2. I'm not sure I would move mission critical apps to it yet. Maybe start the migration with some smaller apps. Just like the PA-8800, there is another Itanium in the pipeline for 2004. It's only getting better.
The key for me at this point, if I had to buy new servers, would be to get into the rp server line which will allow in chasis upgrades to new RISC and Itanium chips when the time is right. It will make future upgrades a little less painfull.

[Pete Randall]

Dave,

That sounds disturbingly familiar to the sales pitch I heard when I bought my N class: "board upgradeable to Itanium and future PA-RISC chips". HA!


Pete "Cynical" Randall