back to article HP spreads Superdome vPar partitions across Integrity line

Hewlett-Packard has just rolled up an update to its venerable Unix platform that gives more virtualization options to more customers and better control over virtualization hypervisors and guests running on its Itanium-based Integrity and Superdome iron. HP is on an odyssey – a a Project Odyssey in fact – to bring Xeon …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Poulson MIA?

    Still no word on the new Integrity servers that will hopefully go along with this new version of HP-UX? Was it this quiet before the launch of Tukwila too?

    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Poulson MIA?

      I doubt hp will announce the new servers until Intel launch the new chip, and seeing as that's not due yet I suspect you're just being a bit premature.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Flame

        Re: Poulson MIA?

        I probably am premature and I'm sorry. I'm just so frustrated after all the ISSCC and Hot Chips teases from Intel and then suddenly just months of silence. How are the massive scores of enterprise enthusiasts like me supposed to cope with this??

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Poulson MIA?

          Will Oracle support this chip for 11g and 10g? I doubt it.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Poulson MIA?

            oracle don't certify against processors, they certify against operating systems... As poulson systems will run HP-UX 11iv3, the same as Tukwila systems, oracle 10g/11g will be supported on them

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Poulson MIA?

              Right, but, from what I hear, there will be an 11iv3.x (a new sub-release) with Poulson.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Poulson MIA?

                Yes, there will be... in fact there have been three of these "update releases" of 11iv3 since Oracle "dropped the bomb" on Itanium support (March 2011, September 2011, and March 2012). Oracle 10g/11g is supported on all 3. They certify Oracle against the major OS release plus minimum patch level - same as they do on AIX & Solaris.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Poulson MIA?

      There will be a Poulson. I don't know if anyone will buy it, but as HP has already paid Intel for the design they will get it out there.

      1. Dazed and Confused

        Re: Poulson MIA?

        Since Poulson is just a drop in plug compatible replacement for Tukwila, there won't need to be any new boxes.

  2. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Boffin

    Certified databases.

    "....Prior to this, only IBM's DB2 V9.X and Oracle's 10g and 11g databases were certified for use with Serviceguard clustering...." That statement is a bit misleading. All Serviceguard is under the wrapper is a set of scripts that handle the calling of application executables and associated resources (storage volumes, IP addresses, etc) to start and stop them in the order required on the node of choice. Whilst hp added some extra support and scripts around certified applications, for years users have been able to make their own scripts for just about any hp-ux application to run inside a Serviceguard cluster, inlcuding databases like PostgreSQL.

  3. P. Lee
    Trollface

    Ever wonder...

    if business intelligence costs more than it yields?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Flame

      Re: Ever wonder...

      It will surely boost quarterly revenues for two or three quarters until customers are pissed off by seemingly random changes (due to BI reports and the action following) and quit buying with the company in question.

  4. Dazed and Confused

    vPars

    The situation with vPars is slightly different to the way that you describe.

    vPars first became available for the i2 blade family late last year with vPars A.06.00, which only ran on these boxes. Since they don't have a huge number of IO slots, just plenty of bandwidth, they switched from using dedicate PCI slots for vPars to using shared IO model which externally looks like the one previously used n the VMs, but with the addition of NPIV support for virtual HBAs.

    This new update, B.06.10 merges the vPar and HPVM products although doesn't yet allow mixing them. This release adds the SuperDome2 and rx2800i2 to this version of vPars. IO for storage is still shared, but some of the new LAN cards are supported in a dedicated modes of operation.

    SuperDome2 customers now have a choice as to whether to run this version of vPars with shared IO, or whether they want to remain running a vPars environment of purely dedicated (no overhead) resources, and there is an update to this environment too.

    Previous cell based systems continue to have their own vPars implementation with no size limits or virtualization overhead.

    Sorry its all a bit confusing.

    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: vPars

      ".....vPars first became available for the i2 blade family late last year with vPars A.06.00...." Yes and no. I'd say it's more accurate to say vPars became SUPPORTED by hp with the release mentioned. Prior to that, vPars was supported on the cell-based Integrity servers (rp/rx7xx0, rp/rx8xx0 ranges and Superdomes), even though the software could be run on top of any hp-ux 11i install. Years ago I had two-socket testing box with vPars on it, which was strictly speaking not supported by hp, but worked just fine. When I asked our hp rep why vPars support was restricted to the cell-based servers he told me it was due to hp wanting it to be used in mission critical solutions, and for them the that really meant the larger servers. I assume that now those larger servers are being replaced by the blades-based offerings I suppose hp just decided to widen the partitioning offering for them.

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