First of all, we have Brian Cox's blog recent post comparing what he thinks of HP-UX and Linux. Read it here:
http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/musings-on-mcc/archive/2009/12/16/linux-vs-unix-shouldn-t-they-be-equals.aspx
Here is a quote:
Similarly, if you asked me to choose between HP-UX and Linux for a customer’s most demanding workload, I would typically recommend HP-UX. However, if my customers’ time horizon is five years from now, then I would seriously consider Linux (by the way, you could replace OpenVMS for HP-UX and Windows for Linux in the above comparison and I would give you a similar answer).
I've met Brian personally last year, and he's a level-headed guy. Preferences for a platform versus another aside, what he says here makes sense on both a business and technical perspective.
Then, around the same time, rumors pop up indicating that Red Hat will be canceling their Itanium port:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/18/redhat_rhel6_itanium_dead/
What will the future be for HP-UX and Integrity? Red Hat apparently abandoning ia64, with Novell being unsure if they'll continue, are especially bad news for BCS. That leaves us with one less operating system for the Integrity line, and it turns out it's one that Cox suggested potential mission critical customers should investigate if planning for 5 years down the road. The outcome for the excellent Integrity line doesn't look that good.
As far as I'm concerned, as a current HP-UX / Integrity customer, it's business as usual for now and will be for a few years to come. We're starting to renew our systems next year and this won't change our plans. But I think it is time to seriously plan my long-term strategy for post 2015.
O.
3 comments:
Oliver,
I am one of the product managers that works for Brian Cox at HP, and would like to thank you for reading the Musings on Mission Critical Computing blog. I'd like to add a couple of comments.
People have been questioning whether Linux is going to replace UNIX for years. I've commented on that at http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/musings-on-mcc/archive/2009/12/07/unix-and-linux-in-the-datacenter.aspx.
I know that at HP, we truly believe in a multi-OS strategy, although the pragmatic side of our business does realize that most HP Integrity server users, such as yourself, run HP-UX 11i.To help provide some insight into the future, we've published a public HP-UX 11i v3 roadmap at http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/us/en/os/hpux11i-25th-anniversary-future.html. I know that Intel has also publicly announced at least 3 upcoming Itanium processor generations: Tukwila, Poulson, and Kittson. Let's face it: any roadmap that goes further out than these is really just a guess. :)
An additional thought: HP supports HP-UX releases for a minimum of 5 years after it has been discontinued, and it ships for at least 5 years, giving each release at least a 10 year life cycle. Your investments in HP-UX and HP Integrity should be safe well after 2015.
Hopefully this helps allay any concern about the future of HP-UX 11i and Integrity servers.
Jacob Van Ewyk
HP Business Critical Systems
If people at HP are worried about selling Itanium servers, then why don't they just help out with finishing the OpenSolaris Itanium port? Solaris already booted up and worked fine on Itanium years ago, but then Sun canceled the port, but now all the code is open source and just waiting for someone to update and touch it up a little bit. I'm really more of a Linux admin because that's what I started out with in school, but I've been running some kind of Solaris (in one form or another) along with FreeBSD on my desktop for two years now and both of them are fabulous operating systems. What's so great about HP-UX that makes it better than Solaris or OpenSolaris? And how many HP-UX administrators run Solaris on their desktops and laptops and home computers like Solaris administrators do (or Linux at home like Linux admins do)? How do you get really good at an operating system when you can't be immersed in it 24 / 7 by giving up Microsoft Windows and using Linux or Solaris or FreeBSD for all of your daily computing tasks?
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