Technology Refresh Question! Refresh Strategy for PARISC Environments

[Alzhy]

Is the 3-year refresh cycle still the norm these days? By refresh I mean upgrade/upkeep of hardware and software (OS) to what's mainstream balancing cost and benefit.

For those that are on PARISC Enterprise Platforms (PA8800/8900) - is your technology refresh strategy still on track for migration to Integrity Platforms or X86-64 (and new OS) environments.?

The position I am taking is that we may need to start looking at migrating to Itanium Integrity since it will be the less painfull technology refresh - even if it is not really the most cost-effective. I reckon as our processing needs grow and the PARISC hardware lineup ages (supposed to be End of Sales already next year?) and parts become hard to come by -- maintenance will be an isssue.

[Geoff Wild]

With Sun - yes.

With HP - no - we are on a 5 year lifecycle - as hardware is more reliable :)

We are just starting down the Itanium road (1st machine came end of last year - my workstation).

Will probably start seriously looking next year for those machines we've had for 5 years.

This year we are replacing our N's with RP4440's.

Rgds...Geoff

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Nelson,

If the machine does its job, it can stay with us much longer than 3 or 5 years. There comes a point where we drop hardware contract and fix as you go. We've got PA-RISC machines in service over 10 years.

Thats now.

My prior employer did not want to hold boxes out of warranty and declared a 3 year policy because the cost of the hardware contract spiked during the forth year after purchase.

Practically speaking they were on a 4-5 year schedule because infrastructure grew faster than the capital budget.

I agree with your position, but PA-RISC and the servers it is built into can be run affordably for years if there is a desire to do so. You are correct that if your policy is to maintain hardware contracts the cost spikes after three years. It is clear now that Itanium is coming and PA-RISC is not getting new investment at HP.

SEP

[Torsten.]

If you see this link http://www.hp.com/products1/unix/operating/public_hp-ux_systems_support.pdf you will find the Guaranteed Minimum Support date for current PA-RISC systems (e.g. rp4440) is 12/31/2012 or 2013. I'm pretty sure until this time most PA-RISC systems are replaced by the Integrity machines.

[Scott Donaldson]

Check with HP,

The document Torsten referred to is a 2005 doc. HP, in Canada at least, just changed the end of contract maintenance for some of the HP9000/Dxxx systems extending it until 31 Dec 2009.

The issue may not be as simple as system support, you probably want to review component support. All the hot plug disks in my 9000/D380 fell off of support 30 Jun 06...Other components fall off in 2007, etc.

[TwoProc]

That's not too bad Scott - seeing that I bought my D380s (still in use for less demanding things) in 98. Hey, that's a nine year run!