HP educates on virtual servers today

The HP user group Connect gave us notice late yesterday that HP will offer instruction in an hour-long Webcast today. Virtual servers offer a potential upgrade for HP 3000 sites who are migrating, but the concepts differ from 3000 fundamental architecture. Andy Schneider of HP will talk at 2:30 PM CDT (19:30 Central Europe time) on Mission Critical Virtualization Solutions with HP Integrity Blades and HP Virtual Server Environment.

Registration for this free GoToWebinar is open online at the Go To Meeting Web site. Schneider, who's with HP's Software Virtualization team in the Enterprise Storage and Servers unit, will show the latest deliverables for HP Integrity Blade server environments,"including processing capabilities, network/storage interconnect technologies, and their interaction with HP Virtual Connect capabilities." This Virtual Server Environment (VSE) is one driver toward migrating to the HP-UX environment.

Promising an insight on "unprecedented business outcomes," the Webcast page says Schneider will talk about the processor and networking upgrades in the Integrity Blade line.

Leveraging on these recent offerings, infrastructure management enhancements in the area VSE’s support of logical servers will be discussed, including expanded capacity planning functions with HP Capacity Advisor, and the related integration with the virtualization and high availability solutions that are integral to the HP VSE environment

HP releases newest 3000 patch

Hewlett-Packard posted notice of a new patch for the HP 3000 late last month. While the repair covers only an obscure problem, the release indicates the vendor continues to test and post minor engineering for 3000 owners.

HP said it would not be creating this type of software for the HP 3000 starting this year. But MPENX21 was built in response to "an obscure security hole" which was reported by Allegro Consultants co-founder Stan Sieler some time ago. While he's not sure when he requested the fix, he has installed and tested the new code — which seems to be the only way to tell what HP has repaired.

HP released the code with a notice as vague as anything community veterans can recall.

This patch corrects the internal specification of a OS code area. Under certain very specific circumstances this oversight left uncorrected could result in a system crash if a purposely written program were to try to access it.

That description will cover just about any security patch for MPE/iX. "Not only are there no specifics," Sieler reported, "but they seem to never tell the original submitter of security problems that their problem has been fixed."

MPENX21 was not built to plug a data security hole, a mission you might expect to benefit HP's remaining 3000 support customers. "It wasn't a hole I was particularly worried about, because it was extremely obscure, and led to a system abort, not to a data security breach," Sieler said.

Hewlett-Packard operated a complete and impressive patch service for 3000s during the 1990s, a period that support experts still recall well. Especially in comparison to the non-information and lack of notice to those who filed service requests (called SRs in the old parlance).

The company's old Software Status Bulletins gave 3000 owners a way to match Known Problem Reports against a list of what the vendor had fixed. This was so long ago the SSB was a thick document issued in print. HP-UX support still can count on Response Center support engineers who who want to get to the root of some bugs which cause system hangs. They follow up, but requests still descend into a cubbyhole where HP decides whether to repair the bugs. System managers report they must notice on their own that a patch sounds like a problem they've reported.

The open source software model doesn't offer vendor-based support such as this, but the level of open source service seems only a little behind what's on offer today. One developer says that all he needs for open source support is a critical mass of people running the software, investigating problems and maybe correcting them, and posting some of the repairs in a manner that can be searched via the Web.

Searching "MPENX21" doesn't yield any Google hits which relate the HP 3000. This is the best reason of all to have a support company backing up your HP 3000 operations. HP has pared back its notifications about operating system repairs.

HP, Dell show caution to the winds

Hewlett-Packard is a bellwether for the world's economy, but the vendor won't toll the beginning of a recovery anytime soon. HP's stock is one of the 30 Dow Jones Industrials blue chips, so its fortunes have a direct impact on the world's perception of economic rebound. CEO Mark Hurd expressed caution last week while he briefed financial analysts in HP's semi-annual presentations.

According to the HP chairman, it's been years since the IT marketplace enjoyed a robust round of purchasing. It was sometime in 2005 when the sales flowed for HP's products, including the servers which HP sells to replace migration-bound 3000s.

"The buildup now of four-year-old desktops, four-year-old notebooks, four-year-old servers, this is creating quite a bubble," Hurd said at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.'s Strategic Decisions conference. "There's going to be a time when there's going to be some real opportunity here."

This kind of bubble has been a steady element of HP 3000 ownership. Five years was the more likely span between major 3000 upgrades, and many customers could push their purchases closer to a decade, so long as business didn't grow too fast. This pace didn't match the churn in PC-based and Unix server sales, so HP retired its 3000 business in favor of the faster-growing IT products.

For now the company's financial and services sectors are providing the majority of HP profits, while ink and printers continue to chip in their 40 percent. Hurd said he's confident HP can hit its profit forecast for fiscal 2009, but he won''t speculate on the timing of a turnaround in tech spending.

HP's chief rival in the Windows-based server arena, Dell, relayed the same kind of caution in the wake of a poor quarterly report last week. The company's CEO Michael Dell said he's "seeing a big deferral of purchases among corporations," while he revealed results for the period that ended May 1. Dell's Q1 earnings dived 63 percent as sales dropped 23 percent.

HP's Q2 report showed the same kind of declining trend as Dell's Q1. Dell posted the second straight quarter of big profit declines. The company doesn't see prospects for improvement. "We don't believe there's enough momentum to call a bottom yet," added Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden.

HP's Unix rebuffs Java security exploit

A new critical patch for the HP-UX operating environment — a key element in many HP 3000 transition plans — has closed the door on the latest security hack.

Java can be forced to execute rogue code on HP's Unix, as well as many other flavors of the OS from other vendors. Versions B.11.11, B.11.23, B.11.31 of HP-UX are affected, running the Java Runtime Engine 6.0.03 or earlier, or RTE 1.4.2.22 or earlier.

The problem's details, scant as they are, are on the HP IT Response Center Web site page dedicated to the security breach. (You'll need a password and user handle to log in. These are free.) The patch is HPSBUX02429; the service number is SSRT090058.

HP says "you could be at risk of a serious recoverable error if action is not taken." The HP 3000 version of Java doesn't use these more recent runtime engines. But Java on the 3000 isn't a fully functional tool, either.

Not all vendors have written a patch to close Java's security holes under Unix. One back door remains open for Apple systems, even after six months of notice about the breach. Apple's OS X is still missing a patch as of this week, much to the dismay of system admins. One developer has actually published a how-to, proof-of-concept exploiting this breach, to nudge along the Apple patch.

The secured versions of Java for HP-UX are available at HP's Java Web site.

New HP exec forced to focus on servers

A Massachusetts court has ruled that new HP Enterprise Storage and Servers executive David Donatelli can work for Hewlett-Packard. But during his first year, Donatelli will have to focus on the latter part of his organization's solutions. Storage work is out until May of 2010.

That's because Donatelli comes to HP from storage rival EMC, where he signed a non-compete clause promising to forgo employment at any competitor. EMC filed for an injunction to block Donatelli's hiring as soon as it was made public. The suit took three weeks to clear the the Suffolk County Superior Court of Massachusetts. The result is that Donatelli will have lots more focus on less-familiar duties managing server business.

HP revised Donatelli's job title to executive vice president of Enterprise Servers and Networking, rather than executive VP of the larger HP organization ESS. He will report directly to executive vice president of the Technology Solutions Group Ann Livermore until next year, when the court's 1-year ban on storage work is lifted.

HP said in a statement the court order satisfies the vendor, since it didn't see Donatelli's hiring blocked, and he'll have an immediate job running HP's server business. Those operations, which include the HP 3000 alternatives HP-UX, Integrity servers and Windows systems, saw a 29 percent drop in sales during HP's second quarter.

"HP is pleased with the court's recent decision, and looks forward to the contributions Donatelli will make to HP's business."

California courts don't recognize non-compete clauses such as the one Donatelli signed. His lawyer argued that he should be able to move to California and escape his non-compete.

HP profits fall on flagging sales

Hewlett-Packard announced yesterday that its Q2 of 2009 continued a decline in sales and introduced a drop in profits. Even the company's vaunted printer business took a 23 percent hit in sales compared to the 2008 Q2.

In the Q2 report conference call with analysts, HP announced it will cut an extra 6,400 jobs. These cuts are in addition to the 24,600 jobs HP is eliminating as a result of its EDS acquisition. HP stock dropped 4 percent in today's trading, the first since the report was released.

Services, wrapped around support and the new EDS operations, offered HP its largest bright spot in profits. Services poured in an $8.5 billion quarter for sales, revenue which HP said came right out of the EDS acquisition. Toner and ink "consumable" sales were down in Q2 as well. Ink makes up about a third of HP's profits.

Enterprise Storage and Servers (ESS), the HP group where HP 3000 alternatives grow up and roll out, reported revenue of $3.5 billion, down 28 percent. Not even the Windows-friendly Industry Standard Servers could supply a bright spot; both ISS and the HP-UX Business Critical Systems posted 21 percent sales declines. The ESS blade revenue fell 12 percent as well. ESS operating profits fell by more than 60 percent over the prior-year period.

HP put its best face on the steep quarterly sales decline by touting cash flow, rather than sales or profits. "Disciplined focus on operational efficiencies and execution drove record cash flow,” said CEO Mark Hurd. "Our services business continued to deliver strong profitability with an increased deal pipeline and the EDS integration tracking ahead of schedule."

Other upbeat news came from the geographic breakdown of sales. The Americas showed a 12 percent increase while the rest of the world's sales fell 10 percent or more. And that Printing and Imaging Group, while posting fewer sales, maintained its operating profit ($1.2 billion) versus last year's Q2.

The overall profitability picture for 2009's first half is not as bleak as the recent results. GAAP profits have fallen 5 percent from last year's Q2 numbers. But every HP business except Services and Finance posted weaker profits than last quarter. And the total earnings before taxes are down 17 percent for the first half of 2009 against last year's numbers.

OpenVMS survives, but will it thrive?

When HP canceled its 3000 futures, the company was still acquiring tomorrows for Digital's OpenVMS. The two communities were similar in nature but wildly different in size. HP 3000 installations never reached 100,000 servers, and had declined to under 50,000 by 2001. OpenVMS could count more than 400,000 systems running worldwide that year. These numbers decided much of the future for the two multipurpose computer systems.

But each of these environments runs an OS built by a vendor. MPE's nuances made porting it to Itanium a longer shot to pay back the investment. OpenVMS was the darling of the Digital customer base, so cutting it some slack (in engineering time) to earn Itanium status also earned HP goodwill with Digital's customers. After all, they'd already been acquired in the late '90s by Compaq.

News broke this week about changes to the OpenVMS leadership at Hewlett-Packard. Sue Skonetski, manager of engineering programs for the OpenVMS software engineering group, will be "pursuing new opportunities." She's leaving HP after 15 years as the main advocate of the OpenVMS platform, but her tenure with VMS goes back to Digital founder Ken Olson's days. Imagine a GM like Harry Sterling departing the 3000 world and you get an idea of what OpenVMS is losing.

HP replaces Skonetski with Sujatha Ramani, an HP manager of 11 years "who will assume Sue's
responsibilities including Technical Customer Programs and Communications." HP businesses like OpenVMS have gotten replacements like Sujatha in the past, engineers who earned MBAs but arrived with experience in areas like printers and PCs — not the legacy of work in an environment designed before they graduated grammar school.

The OpenVMS community events in 2008 would remind a 3000 user of any MPE meeting 10 years earlier. Customers worry about their share of HP's attention, while the OS lags behind other HP products in adoption of new technology. OpenVMS now has an 8.3-H1 version to run with the Montvale generation of Itanium chips, and the 8.4 version is likely to be a full year behind HP's support for the power-smart Tukwila generation. (Intel is promising a mid-2009 Tukwila rollout, while 8.4 is coming in mid-2010).

3000 community sources have debated whether Skonetski's departure signals the end of the OpenVMS era, or more accurately, how soon that finale will arrive. A similar advocate exists for HP's Unix community. Sometimes there's no one left in a management tree with the same tenure to assume an evangelist's post. While HP engineering may not take a ding in the OpenVMS shift, this proprietary solution is losing someone to champion it from a perspective of growing up alongside the customers. At least the 3000 never had to weather that kind of separation: from Sterling to Winston Prather to Dave Wilde and finally to Jennie Hou, all had two decades and more of MPE in their blood.

OpenVMS veterans who post to the equivalent of the 3000 mailing list were skeptical and worried about the changes to their platform's top brass. That's the nature of a mailing list poster, someone who's often concerned about any changes the vendor unveils with a bland letter. But while a 3000 shop is considering whether HP's Unix is a safe haven for a migration, the customer would do well to see how OpenVMS fares in HP's plans over the next decade. It remains to be seen if HP learned anything from its disengagement with the 3000 community.

HP-UX hardware rises on Itanium adoptions

HP 3000 migrations to Unix trip up on a few fronts, but one hurdle is declining of late. Sales of the Itanium chipsets used in HP's Integrity servers are on the rise, measured both by sales and by percentage of market.

"While the server business is certainly mired in difficult times, the multifaceted community that surrounds Itanium-based systems has special cause for optimism," said Joan Jacobs, president and executive director of the Itanium Solutions Alliance. For more objective markers of Itanium — which must run servers at any site choosing HP-UX — the figures from IDC and Gartner analyst houses back up the claims of the Alliance.

Gartner's report might be most important, stating that in 2008 Itanium machine shipments outgrew RISC-based alternatives. Itanium grew in both sales and shipments, although revenues have not kept the same pace as discounting becomes steep in the non-Windows server world. HP is responsible for most of the Itanium increase. The vendor also has reduced its RISC-based sales to the point where more than 80 percent of HP's non-standard server dollars come from Integrity sales.

This is good news for an HP Unix community that has seen declines in HP's new-customer success, as well as a drop in the HP Unix training at the Connect HP Technology Forum. Selling this Intel-HP solution was not supposed to be this difficult, so the better figures of adoption give HP-UX some breathing room.

IDC pegged the Itanium shipments at an 18 percent rise for the final quarter of 2008. Intel's marketing group in Asia Pacific claims that the processor's business grew while IBM's Power line (the Series p and Series i) fell by 22 percent.

As we've reported before, the fate of the HP-UX alternative to the HP 3000 rests in the good health of Itanium/Integrity. HP has chosen not to port its Unix to any other processor, including the dominant x86 successor Xeon. The vendor is often the first to introduce servers which use the latest in the Itanium family. Intel has queued up it quad-core Tukwila chip as the next-generation 64-bit Itanium processor designed for use in enterprise servers.

The chip maker will now release Tukwila around the middle of this year, Intel officials said. The chip was due for release early this year, but Intel delayed it to add new capabilities to keep the chip in line with future technology advancements.

The Itanium Alliance's statement of good health included notice that high-profile migrations from mainframes are among the sweet spots for Itanium in a world dominated by x86.

"Even as the performance and scalability of x86 architectures make great progress," Jacobs said, "the inherent strengths of Itanium-based technology will continue to prove irreplaceable for mission-critical enterprise workloads, including large-scale databases and data warehousing; for the inevitable migration away from costly mainframes; and for intensive applications that rely on parallel processing, large memories and complicated algorithms."

HP's XP marches onward into new decade

This week marks a fresh decade for HP's XP, the StorageWorks disk array that Hewlett-Packard has been selling since 1999. From humble beginnings in an XP48 configuration, the storage units have grown to XP12000 arrays. The XP48 could take on 48 devices for up to 3.5 terabytes of storage. The XP12000 now acommodates up to 12 petabytes of storage, or about 3,000 times as much as 1999's XP48.

An HP executive of more than 18 years storage experience recalls this week that HP 3000s were in the earliest target market for the XP devices. But the storage arrays didn't even gain the XP name until storage competitor EMC sued HP. Hewlett-Packard landed on the "XP" years before Microsoft picked those two letters to stamp its latest Windows. The XP arrays are a homesteading solution as an upgrade to existing internal storage, and the latest models can serve multiple operating environments all at once in migration and transition environments.

3000s were one of the first two targets to sell XPs. StorageWorks Marketing Communications Manager Calvin Zito writes in the Around the Storage Block blog on HP's Communities site, "One of my roles was to work with our server divisions--our HP3000 and HP9000--about the coming XP Disk Array.  Since HP was reselling [Hitachi's] high-end product, they needed to be in a position to integrate the XP into their offerings."

Zito goes on to comment on a "Five Nines" initiative for the HP9000 group, a clue that these big arrays had more initial targets in HP's Unix enterprise customer sites. But he had his start as an HP 3000 CE in the 1980s before moving into HP marketing and then storage.

The vendor called the XP arrays stress-free in 1999, and bullet-proof in 2006. A fun test followed. HP used 70 pounds of C-4 explosives to blow up an XP12000 array in 2007, along with servers, to show how fast enterprise systems could be switched over to hot sites. But the first explosion for this line was to jettison its initial name, once EMC learned that HP was launching the SureStore E Series MC256. HP reps and partners were calling it the array the Series E MC256.

The two companies parted ways in 1999's summer when EMC ended its resale contract with HP — once HP put its own brand on a competing disk product manufactured by Hitachi. The vendor's relations with EMC have slid to the point where the leader of EMC's storage sector jumped a non-compete clause to join HP, assuming the post of retiring executive Scott Stallard. Stallard led the HP enterprise server business, among other duties.

But the XP arrays have always been a compatible partner with the HP 3000. The latest editions of the devices require a management console which has nothing to do with MPE/iX, but that kind of controller is standard for arrays these days.

HP nabs EMC storage exec as ESS chief

HP named a new top executive to its Enterprise Storage, Servers and Networking group this week, a new hire leading HP's business server group after he left EMC following mandatory pay cuts there in March.

David Donatelli takes the executive VP post at Hewlett-Packard on May 5 after leaving his job as chief of EMC Corporation's storage group. Donatelli, who saw his EMC pay cut by 10 percent in March, takes over for retiring Scott Stallard, an HP veteran of 24 years who oversaw the company's blade server success.

EMC's CEO cut pay for five top executives including Donatelli. HP's CEO Mark Hurd said “I am pleased to have David join the HP leadership team. He will be a key contributor in driving growth and innovation for HP.” Donatelli, who saw a pay cut from $700,000 to $630,000 at EMC, has filed a lawsuit against his former employer to protect his move to HP. EMC filed a suit against him that charges he violates a non-compete clause through his jump to HP.

Donatelli comes to lead HP's server business with significant experience in storage, but little current work in the server segment. The HP enterprise server unit, which develops and sells HP 3000 migration targets such the Integrity server line, posted the largest drop in revenues in the latest quarterly report. Donatelli heads to HP with detailed knowledge of EMC's new server-network-storage alliance with Cisco.

Pay cuts will also commence for HP's top executives this month. The company's numbers in hardware and enterprise products fell sharply in Q1 of 2009. HP reported sales declines in the ESS operations of Business Critical Systems servers (including Integrity systems) of 17 percent, along with a 22 percent drop in Industry Standard Servers (including ProLiants).

HP is hiring a executive to oversee its new BladeSystem Matrix, a combination of servers, storage and networking designed to create virtual computing resources. The blade-based virtual datacenters promise a new level of flexibility in deploying computing power across enterprises.

Donatelli worked at EMC from the company's earliest days, leaving the vendor after 22 years. Stallard announced his retirement last year and leaves HP after 34 years of service. Donatelli reports to HP's executive VP for all computer-related sales Ann Livermore.

“David is an experienced business executive with a track record of driving growth and innovation,” said Livermore. “I look forward to what the team will accomplish under his strategic leadership."

California aims at changes for offenders

HP 3000s track offenders in California prisons. Ever since he left HP's COBOL labs, OpenMPE director Walter Murray has worked in the Enterprise Information Services division of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. HP has announced a big contract to revamp the department's computing through the vendor's EDS subsidiary.

HP's press release says that the engagement "streamlines dozens of databases, record keeping processes and systems with a single integrated solution. The resulting highly-automated environment will include software, hardware and processes designed to transform paper-based adult and juvenile offender records into digital records."

The HP release calls this work "applications modernization services." Making applications more modern in the prison system probably won't eliminate their building block: COBOL.

The HP 3000s may now have an exit date set for them -- it looks like 2013, more than two years beyond HP's end of support deadline. But the language these systems use is likely to remain in Murray's toolset for the department, which he calls CDCR.

Yes, I’m very aware of the project to “modernize applications” at CDCR. Yes, SOMS -- the Strategic Offender Management System -- will involve replacing HP 3000s with something more modern.

However, speaking only for myself, I don’t think I’ve written my last line of COBOL just yet.

COBOL is another way to define a platform for customers' applications, especially apps created and cultivated in-house. Other platforms include databases (IMAGE vs. Eloquence vs. Oracle), vendors of systems, and complex, enterprise-sized packaged apps such as ERP systems. Migrating more than two of these platforms at once increases risk for anyone but the shops who can afford to hire outside expertise.

A CDCR release says that 40 systems will be consolidated in a project budgeted at almost a quarter-billion dollars. The four-year effort from EDS "will allow custody and programs staff to better manage the offender population, which should lead to a reduced recidivism rate."