IVM

[Pete Randall]

I'm trying to budget for a new Itanium server for next year. I'm going to want to virtualize my production and development environments on this machine so I was thinking that IVM would be the perfect solution.

So, first off, is IVM the perfect solution or would some other (VPars?) virtualization method be better.

Second, what the heck does one have to order to get IVM? If I look so software.hp.com, the virtualization link says:

"The products for this category are coming soon. Please check back at a later time. "

Not terribley helpful. I did find some sort of trial for IVM (can't find it again, though), but no product number and little further info on pricing or the like.

Can anyone shed any light on which direction I should be headed and how I'm supposed to get there?


Pete

[Ganesan R]

Hi,

If you want to know more about integrity virutal machines.

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12715_div/12715_div.HTML

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Pete,

The acronym IVM is for an IBM product (Integrated Virtualization Manager) - we try not to use it if we can help it. Generally HPVM or Integrity VMs is what we try to say!

Whether HPVM is right for your environment is down the the load profile of the environment you want to virtualize... heavy IO and CPU loads? Probably best to look at vPars... light IO load and spikey CPU loads - might suit HPVMs well... as usual the answer is "it depends". Can you share some more data with us on what this is for/what it is replacing?

With regards to purchase, its pretty easy now, just order the VSE Operating Environment and you will get HPVMs/vPars into the bundle (remembering of course that you can only use vPars on cell based systems.)

The VSE OE also bundles in everything else you need for VSE (gWLM, Capacity Advisor, Virtualization Manager). For a whistle-stop tour have a look at this webinar here:

http://h20338.www2.hp.com/hpux11i/cache/591336-0-0-0-121.html

In fact if you want to see more webinars on other 11iv3 topics and the like, just go to:

http://www.hp.com/go/kod

HTH

Duncan

[Pete Randall]

My apologies for the mis-use of the acronym. I had no idea!

With regard to our environment, it varies. Day to day we are an online, real-time DB - neither I/O nor processor intensive. Four times a year, we run a huge process which ends up updating virtually every record in the database after doing some heavy duty number crunching on performance data.

We currently run both production and development in separate VPars on an rp7410. I've never been truly happy with VPars, though, and the little bit I've been able to gather about HPVM sounded like a better solution - more flexible, etc., etc.

When my vendor came back with a $20,000 quote on the T2786AC VSE Suite product, it virtually blew my proposal clean out of the water. I can no longer come anywhere near cost justifying the new hardware/software environment. The only hope I now have of getting this approved is to beg and that rarely works.

I thought VSE was a completely separate product - was I mistaken?


Pete

[Patrick Wallek]

VSE is one of the "NEW" OEs. HP has recently completely revamped their OE lineup.

Check out this link for HP's new 11iv3 OEs:
http://h20338.www2.hp.com/hpux11i/cache/585225-0-0-0-121.html

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Pete,

>> Four times a year, we run a huge process which ends up updating virtually every record in the database after doing some heavy duty number crunching on performance data

With that in mind I'd be tempted to go vPars again, although that puts you on a rx7640 as a minimum. However as you're replacing a rp7410, if you want like-for-like OLTP performance a rx6600 with 2 sockets/4 cores of CPU (out of a possible 4 scoket/8cores) would more than match the performance of the old war horse.

So the question is, do you risk the non vPar platform which you'll have to run Integrity VMs in (which might get perf constrained during your update process), or do you cost for a more expensive rx7640 which will do vPars and give you a "known" solution. My advice would be to request a PoC service with the vendor and go through an update in a HPVM to judge it for real.

I hope you've costed in the savings you make from transferring your OS licenses from the rp7410 to the new platform - that can save you a bunch of money. (If your rp7410s already have the Enterprise OE plus vPars you might be able to transtition straight to the VSE OE)

As for VSE - well you don't have to buy all that if you don't want to or budgets don't allow, but I have to say its the future - this stuff really rocks when deployed right.

You could just transfer your existing licenses and purchase HPVM licenses only (T2767BC) - not sure about costs in US$, but in GBP£ its approx £1000 for a license and £1000 for 3 years 24x7 support per-core, so 4 cores = £8000 at list price (thats less than $16,000 dollars before discounts)

The confusion over products is probably down to the new Operating Environments - one of them bundles in all the VSE stuff - see more here:

http://h20338.www2.hp.com/hpux11i/cache/585225-0-0-0-121.html

HTH

Duncan

[Duncan Edmonstone]

One more point - don't skimp on memory on an Integrity server - the IA64 architectire is generally more memory hungry than PA-RISC, so I usually look for 1.5x - 2.0x the memory (i.e. if you have 16GB now, go with 24-32GB in an Integrity system)

The good news there is that (although still expensive compared to PC memory), Integrity memory isn't as expensive as it used to be. Again you'll find the rx6600 memory to be cheaper than the rx7640 memory.

HTH

Duncan

[Tim Nelson]

My experience.

We run 3 rx6600 8way 64GB RAM supporting prod and non-prod oracle environments in 21 vGuests backed by 2 EVA 4000s. and a 4th server for DRP.

I am very happy !!

Creation and deployment is a breeze.

We have had NO performance issues as of yet. I would lable our workload is medium. Certainly if you have a single workload that would consume all the physical resources then vm is not right for u.

As mentioned the new release of 11.31 has a release that replaces the EOE that includes all the IVM software required.

Also as mentioned, RAM RAM RAM.

[Pete Randall]

I think the rx7640 is out of our league so that would eliminate VPars. We've been looking at a rx4640 with 4 cores. The only major difference I can see between the 4640 and the 6600 is that the 6600 has the zx2 chipset. Is that going to make a huge difference?

The biggest of our number crunchers doesn't even run on-site since our R&D machine simply can't handle it. It's been run at the University on a Linux box with a 3GHz Opteron processor with 64Gb of memory. Can we expect the rx4640 or rx6600 with 32Gb of memory to match the current performance that we've been seeing?


Pete

[Tim Nelson]

That would be a touch call Pete.

I guess if you think about it this way it may help you to decide, at least on using vPars or IVM.

vPar vs IVM:

IVM
resources are shared granularly
CPU, MEM, IO are all shared

vPar
resources assigned by hba (or entire entitity)

If you are looking to better share and use all your resources on a single physical server then IVM is the way to go.

If you wish to share some resource but keep those resources isolated the vPars are the way to go.

My issues in the past with vPar is that I ran out of HBAs. Had to have at least an rp7xxx server to hold all the hbas and/or CPUs.

With IVM you are only limited by RAM ( each HPUX install needs at least 1GB ( or there about ) and then add on the app reqs. So a 4 GB server could only support 2 small guests. An 8GB more smaller ones or less bigger ones..

The reason I went with the rx6600 was that it was the largest small server HP had. The CPU performance was equiv to an rx7xxx and ram max was 128GB. ( here was the great part) The RAM in the rx6600 was 1/2 the cost of the same RAM in a rx7xxx ( about $500/gb vs $1000/gb.. Maint was also 1/2 the cost.

If you think that 8 CPUS are not enough then you must go rx7xxx or bigger.

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Pete,

Unless you are looking at 2nd user equipment, I'm not sure why you would consider the rx4640 - it's end of sale, doesn't support the latest Montvale processors and I don't think its actually cheaper than a rx6600 anyway.

The rx6600 zx2 chipset offers considerably more bandwidth and faster memory.

It's also likely to go end of support about 3 years sooner than the rx6600 as well.

See this matrix here:

http://h20338.www2.hp.com/hpux11i/downloads/public_hp-ux_systems_support.pdf

HTH

Duncan

[Duncan Edmonstone]

When you say number crunchers - can you characterise that? Are we talking a lot of floating point arithmetic, or just integer? or Something else entirely?

HTH

Duncan

[Pete Randall]

Yes, the rx4640 was what we call "remarketed". I assume that's the same as "2nd user". I told the vendor that I wanted the latest chipset and longest support life, but didn't follow up to make sure that's what I was getting. Remind me to shoot myself later.

As far as characterizing the number crunching, I'm trying to get further details. All I can say at the moment is that it's a Fortran program which calculates "genetic evaluations for type traits", whatever that may be. I'll post any further info as soon as I get it.


Pete

[Torsten.]

If I had the choice I would take a zx2000 system or at least a zx2.

Some nice features:

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/downloads/4AA0-0139ENW.pdf

Since the rx4640 is no longer listed among the entry levels, you will get a second hand machine only.

http://h20341.www2.hp.com/integrity/cache/331424-0-0-0-121.html

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Torsten,

>> If I had the choice I would take a zx2000 system or at least a zx2.


You mean sx2000 yes? As in a rx7640/rx8640/Integrity Superdome

HTH

Duncan

[Torsten.]

sx2000 of course, sorry.

[kirkkak]

We have used IVM in Oracle DB devel/test environments for 2 years (starting from 1.2). I personally like the rx2660 version - IVM host OS local disks, ~3-4 IVM Guest OS on local disks/or SAN and DB on SAN; 32GB is proportional to CPU power. But in your case i agree with previous writers that rx6600 sounds reasonable with enough flexibility to add ram/cpu.

[Pete Randall]

Have faith guys - I haven't forgotten this thread nor your efforts. I'm just waiting on further information.

I do have one more question, though. Why is it so damn hard to find out what a HP-UX server costs? Why can't HP have a site like Dell's, where you can just pick out the things you want on your server and it will show you list prices? Spending days working with vendors only to find that they're quoting you something that isn't what you want sucks. Meanwhile the boss is breathing down my neck because this was supposed to be all wrapped up last Monday!

Arrrgggghh!


Pete

[Pete Randall]

I finally found a website where I can "configure and price" and after I go through the whole specification process, it says "contact HP" in every last price slot. Damn.


Pete

[TTr]

> Why can't HP have a site like Dell's, where you can just pick out the things you want on your server and it will show you list prices

The enterprize configurator has been on the HP site for years. They moved it recently to a new site.

http://egui.houston.hp.com/eGlue/eco/begin.do

http://egui.houston.hp.com/eGlue/eco/begin.do

[Pete Randall]

Yep - that's the one I found but it doesn't show prices.


Pete

[TTr]

Oh no!. They removed pricing! I had not used the configurator for the last few weeks since they moved it to the new location. I hope they link up to their price database from the new server and put the prices back.

[Duncan Edmonstone]

>> Why is it so damn hard to find out what a HP-UX server costs? Why can't HP have a site like Dell's, where you can just pick out the things you want on your server and it will show you list prices?

Cos we want you to get the right kit at the right price... configuring UNIX servers is significantly more complex than configuring some pokey little x86 boxes, and if you make a mistake with the config it'll cost you A LOT more. Your supplier should be helping you with all this. If I were you I'd be telling the supplier to get his *ss into your office and sit with you while he goes through configs using our internal configurator tool on his laptop. He can then lend you his experience in configuration and give you list prices there and then.

>> Spending days working with vendors only to find that they're quoting you something that isn't what you want sucks.

I know what I would do in this situation... time to get out the stick with nails in the end...


HTH

Duncan

[Pete Randall]

Thanks, Duncan. That was good for a chuckle.

I'm still waiting to get back to you on the workload characterization. Seems like that's all I'm doing is waiting lately.


Pete