PA-RISC or itanium

[Jay_122]

Hi all,
We are looking to migrate all of our L2000's and RP4440's to an RX8640 (Itanium) or PA8420 (PA-RISC). Currently, we run Oracle 9.x and 10G. Any concerns with itanium for oracle or other vendors? Any issues with oracle migration from PA-RISC to Itanium? We are also putting a DMX2000 behind this new server. Anyone have experience with a DMX connected to an itanium VPar? Any and all responses appreciated. Points for all who respond.

Thanks in advance,
Jay

[Peter Godron]

Jay,
Some threads covering this area:
https://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=966112
and an old one:
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=210749

[spex]

Hi Jay,

We're looking to make a similar migration. Oracle on the Itanium is solid.

One software vendor of ours has issued a PA-RISC to Integrity transition guide, which mentions making use of the HP ARIES Dynamic Binary Translator (hopefully just as an interim step). Here's more information on ARIES:

http://h21007.www2.hp.com/dspp/tech/tech_TechDocumentDetailPage_IDX/1,1701,8566,00.html

Pay close attention to this paragraph:

HP does not provide product support for PA-RISC/HP-UX applications when run under ARIES on Integrity servers running HP-UX 11i V2 (or higher). In some cases even if some PA-RISC/HP-UX applications are tested/validated by HP, the software vendor(s) may not officially support the product on Integrity systems running under ARIES. HP recommends that you contact your software vendor(s) for product support of your PA-RISC applications under ARIES on Integrity systems running HP-UX 11i V2 (or higher).

PCS

[Geoff Wild]

We are in the early stages of migrating to Itanium.

We just ordered a pair of RX3600's to replace our ignite servers.

The only concern we have for Oracle is - keeping our DEV/QA/Prod in sync.

Basically, we feel we are going to say take say a month or 2 and do a code freeze. Because if you replace your dev systems - you won't be able to easily migrate code to QA if QA is still parisc.

Rgds...Geoff

[Jay_122]

Spex,
Did you notice any memory increase with Oracle on itanium?

[Dave Wherry]

How many servers are you planning to consolidate on one of these rx or rp systems?
One residual benefit will probably keep lower Oracle licensing costs. For each 4 way L2000 that you are replacing you'll need less than 1 CPU on the new systems.
You might be able to use Integrity Virtual Machines, go sub-processor on a partition. So unless you have a lot of L2000s and rp4440s, you might not need to go all the way to an rx8640 or rp8420. A smaller less expensive system might work for you.

[spex · Accepted solution]

Hi Jay,

In general, Oracle on the Itanium requires more memory than on the PA-RISC, and 10g requires more memory than 9i.

For more information, see "Memory Usage on HP-UX Integrity Servers", available here:
http://h21007.www2.hp.com/dspp/files/unprotected/hpux/Itanium-Memory-Usage.pdf

To quote the "Considerations for Oracle servers" section of this document:
Considerations for Oracle servers
The Oracle server software is especially affected by the read-only data issue. The most significant
effect on physical memory configuration observed to date is caused by an increase in the size of
data in versions 9i and 10gR1 of the Oracle server. This application contains approximately 3
MB of large constant arrays that were placed in the sharable text segment on PA-RISC, but due to
a difference in the build environment are placed in the per-process data segment on Itanium. For
applications that run many instances of the same application (as Oracle does), these tables are
thus duplicated many times in memory. With the 10gR2 release of Oracle, these tables are
placed in text, where a single copy is shared by all processes. If the Oracle server is configured
to use a transaction monitor or to use pooled or shared servers, rather than the typical server-per-
user model, the effect will not be as great.
Other applications that run separate processes per user or transaction may be similarly affected.
The increase in memory requirements may be estimated by comparing the data segment size of
the PA-RISC application binary with that of the Itanium binary, and multiplying the difference by
the expected number of running processes. Applications that use kernel threads rather than
separate processes, however, will not generally be affected, as the constant data will be shared
by all threads.

PCS

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

I am in a shop that has resisted mirgration. We happily run our 32 bit applications on 64 bit PA-RISC around the world. There is some question as to whether those same applicatoins will work on IA-64 Itanium.

I believe they will, which will facilitate the migration.

SEP

[Dennis Handly]

>SEP: There is some question as to whether those same applications will work on IA-64 Itanium.

I assume you don't yet need the performance of a native compilation? To see if you can run your application under Aries, refer to the link that PCS gave.

[Yogeeraj_1]

hi Jay!

concerning Itanium, there is nothing to worry about when it comes to Oracle. Concerning migration, i would prefer to go to the latest version available as well as the latest patchset (10.2.0.3)


The fact that Oracle 10g is better than the predecessor version itself is a Plus! I would recommend that you go for the maximum possible memory that you can afford!

good luck!

kind regards
yogeeraj

[Jay_122]

Thanks for all the help, we went with itanium.