Running HPUX on non-HP hardware ?

[Tom Horan]

What's the verdict ?

I know we've got Itanium, but is it possible to run HP-UX on non-HP hardware yet ?

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

Nope.


Pete

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi Tom,

No.

would be nice but is not possible (yet).

Best regards,
Robert-Jan

[Tom Horan]

What's holding it back ? Hardware drivers ?

Is there any other PA-RISC server manufacturers ?

[Patrick Wallek]

Tom,

You pretty much answered your own question there. All the drivers are a big part of it.

And No, there aren't any other manufacturers of PA-RISC hardware. HP is the sole member of that club.

[Bernhard Mueller]

Tom,

there are the Continuum servers from Stratus using PA-RISC CPUs, but I bet that is more or less the opposite of what you are looking for ;-)

Regards,
Bernhard

[Steven E. Protter]

Tom, selling hardware is profitable. Selling service contracts to cover hardware can be profitable if priced correctly.

As a public company HP tries to make money for its shareholders. That may be a motivation, I don't work for HP or speak for them.

I would not want to be the first one to use HP-UX on non-hp hardware. I think it is however a superior operating system and should be ported to other hardware.

I would drop Linux for HP-UX in an instant if the licensing was affordable. I run a webhosting company in my "spare" time.

HP is a customer driven company. They tell me that if enough customers ask for something, HP does it, because one of HP's stated missions is to facilitate their customers in their core businesses.

So I suggest you contact your HP representitive and ask for what you want. I've seen that if enough people ask for something, they get it.

SEP

[Ted Buis]

Tom,

HP has licensed HP-UX to specific vendors in the past, and may in the future. Right now even the Itanium hardware isn't consistent enough to all for a shrinkwapped HP-UX, as Microsoft does for Windows. Steven Protters's comment raises the question whether HP should copy the RedHat LINUX business model, which it appears that SUN is doing. My thought on that is there are costs for developing and supporting operating systems, and those have to be recovered, by either licensing fees, support fees or a combination of the two. Making one or the other free, just shifts the costs to a different line and but doesn't change the total. Adding support for additional platforms may increase revenue, but would also increase costs to support those platforms, as well as adding additional testing time for new releases. The demand would have to be significant. Also, at present HP uses their own chipsets for Itanium based Integrity servers, IBM has their own chipset, and others use the Intel chipset. It just isn't that simple.