Re: Install Oracle 8i for HP-UX PA-RISC on HP-UX Itanium?

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, it was written:

> I understand that HP-UX 11i v2 on Itanium is binary compatible with HP-UX
> 11i 1.5 and 1.6 from HP webpage. 8.1.7 is probably made to be compatible
> with earlier OS releases as well. Note that I'm just guessing here, I've
> never touched an Itanium box so far.

PA-RISC and Itanium have *absolutely no* binary compatibility.

HP-UX PA-RISC binaries are executed on Itanium via "Aries" - a binary emulation runtime environment similar to a Java JVM.

If you have critical PA-RISC applications, make no mistake, you should run them on PA-RISC systems.

Furthermore, you are running Oracle 7. As far as I know (and I have experimented somewhat), Oracle 7 will not run under HP-UX 11 or higher versions - it requires HP-UX 10.20. There is no way that you can get HP-UX 10.20 to run on Itanium. 10.20 to 11 migration can be very painful.

For your O7 applications, I would buy K-Class PA-RISC servers. Try to purchase systems that are equipped with PA-8000 processors (or higher) - these chips will run 64-bit HP-UX 11; PA-7000 processors are 32-bit only. You should be able to purchase used models for $1,500-$5,000. The K380/580 systems are scalable to 6 cpus at 240MHz (which is reasonable performance) - many of the lower end models max out at 4 cpus.

Beware of newer PA-RISC models (n-class, etc.), as they will not run 10.20 AFAIK. Here are some links to information about Aries:

http://devrsrc1.external.hp.com/STK/Aries.html

"Aries' performance varies depending on the nature of applications. For user-interactive/system-intensive applications, Aries performance is comparable to the native PA run of the applications. For compute-intensive applications, Aries performs at a very reasonable level: integer applications slow down by a factor of 2-4 and floating-point applications slow down by a factor of 3-6."

http://www.compaq.fi/services/eventcalendar/presentations/ItaniumBazaar.ppt http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2822837,00.html

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