Migration advice — for HP-UX users
September 9, 2008
HP has scheduled a couple of Webcast briefings in September about migration for HP-UX customers: Moving from older HP 9000 hardware to Integrity systems, and upgrading to the latest version of HP's Unix.
The advisory on hardware issues takes place tomorrow, Sept. 10. HP's executives at the recent HP Technology Forum reported plenty of older HP 9000 systems still running companies today. Hewlett-Packard not only gains revenue when these customers move to newer, less power-hungry systems — the vendor also gets more buy-in for using HP's Unix, a solution every bit as proprietary as Windows or IBM's Unix. A new server means a longer lifespan for using HP-UX, instead of looking at Linux.
HP's Integrity hardware is the only new-generation technology which runs HP-UX. HP's Chuck Kausch, BCS Technical Evangelist, will make a case for migrating to the new server architecture — which might require changing some in-house HP-UX apps — at 10 CDT (US) tomorrow. Register, if you're making a transition to the HP 9000 or have some in house, at the Webcast's page on the Connect user group Web site.
Connect is also offering HP a chance to sell its Unix customer on the latest version of HP-UX, 11i v3. While this upgrade won't earn HP much revenue, the change could deliver some adjusting of configurations as a byproduct of its improved feature set. The HP-UX Webcast is Sept. 24.
Martin Whittaker, Director of Engineering in HP's Business Critical Systems division, will make the case for 11i v3 at 11AM CDT on the 24th. The Webcast's event page, also hosted by Connect, offers these reasons for migrating to v3, instead of using v1 or v2:
Ample capacity for exploding data requirements. For example, HP-UX 11i v3 enables 100 million zettabytes of storage (that’s zettabytes – ZB – with 21 zeros!). Management is simplified with next-generation mass storage stacks and the dynamic addition of memory and processors that support growth capacity without interruption, while the dynamic movement of memory across HP Virtual Partitions enables flexible reallocation to needy workloads.
The ability to virtualize servers is among the leading benefits of moving up to the latest HP-UX. This is unlikely to be much of an issue for the 3000 sites which are still in the process of implementing a migration to Unix; they'll get the newest version by default. But an explanation of how virtualization is better managed by v3 will be useful for any site still considering how migration will improve their computing capability.