[Info-vax] "HP started then spiked HP-UX on x86 project"

[Paul Sture]

On Wed, 23 May 2012 17:41:51 -0700, Neil Rieck wrote:

> On May 23, 4:15 pm, Paul Sture <p... at sture.ch> wrote:
>> <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/23/
>> hp_project_blackbird_redwood_hp_ux/>
>>
>> or
>>
>> http://bit.ly/LED7hd
>>
>> "As part of the ongoing lawsuit about whether or not Oracle had
>> committed itself to supporting its software on Hewlett-Packard's
>> Itanium-based servers, the software giant did a core dump of very
>> interesting documents that show what many of us suspected: that HP did
>> indeed mull acquiring the Sparc/Solaris business and that HP did in
>> fact have a skunkworks that was porting the HP-UX variant of Unix to
>> the x86 processor from Itanium."
>>
> 
> Speaking of porting (this is a duplicate post from another thread)

I've just read that and was just about to reply to it when I saw this 
reply.
 
>  ###
> 
> For the past 3 months I have been involved in cleaning up a number (10)
> of virtualized VAXs. I don't know why everyone uses the term
> "virtualized" because these platforms are running on the Charon-VAX
> emulation which runs on x86 (well, really the XEON flavor as part of
> DL380 but I digress).
> 
> p.s. according to the contractors, my employer is running more than 25
> of these things
> 
> Don't get me wrong, the disk i/o on these beasts is incredibly fast. And
> there is something neat about doing a VMS standalone backup (shutdown
> VMS; shut down Charon-VAX; then duplicate a Windows-2003 folder by just
> dragging and dropping). Doing any disk backup or restore just takes
> seconds.

Using Windows Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2 backup are even better, for 
they use "Shadow copy" (not to be confused with VMS Volume Shadowing) to 
backup only the disk blocks which have changed.  While I my VMS 
emulations are usually closed when that is running, I have had no 
problems restoring Linux etc virtual machines which were up when the 
backups ran.

> But the CPU power is horrible. For example, generating a new set of
> 1024-bit DSA keys takes 5 minutes on this emulated uVAX-4300 while less
> than one second is required on my DS20e Alpha.

I noticed that during the installation of VMS 8.4 under the FreeAXP 
emulator.  I didn't time it, but it was enough to send me into the 
kitchen to prepare a meal.

> Once you buy Charon keys (rumored to be in the range of 8k each; HP is a
> authorized reseller so they get a cut); ILO licenses for the CPUs and
> SANs; Windows licenses; VMS transfer licenses; the all-in costs of doing
> something like this is not cheap.
> 
> Why am I saying all this? It seems to me that HP thinks they can keep
> OpenVMS alive by selling Charon-VAX and Charon-Alpha emulations (while
> making a buck on the side) rather than doing a native x86 port (as it
> appears they have done with HP-UX).

With all the current hype about virtualisation, it's easy to imagine high 
level folks thinking it is perfectly adequate.  While forgetting that 
Charon is an emulator, not a Hypervisor.

That doesn't help anyone running on Itanium of course.

> This emulation/virtualization technology is not that easy to manage in a
> large enterprise as you would think.  In the old days there was only one
> group responsible; now there are three (one group is responsible for all
> Windows issues; another for the Charon environment; and a third for
> VMS).

We had a taste of that with the Windows console for Wildfire systems.

We didn't claim to have Windows expertise in our group, and didn't want 
the distraction of acquiring it either.  The financial justification for 
those machines came from an event where a UPS failed to fulfil its job 
description, taking a whole building's power with it, and management got 
to see how expensive downtime could really be.

We made the Wildfire consoles the responsibility of our on-site Compaq 
hardware engineering team, so for us they were "just another piece of 
hardware", no organisational change required.

> The whole experience has left me with the feeling of dead-technology-
> walking.
> 
> If I were HP, I'd have the skunk-works in India working on an x86 port
> right now.

Some or many, but not all VAX and Alpha customers are catered for by the 
emulators available.  But what will happen to those using Itanium?  Given 
the complexity of the beast, is an emulator even feasible?

Or do Itanium customers simply buy in extra systems while they are still 
available, and build up a suitable spares inventory? (looking long term 
here - see what has happened in the VAX and Alpha markets)


-- 
Paul Sture