White Paper

Data Center Modernization

The Case for Migrating from

Itanium/HP-UX to x86/SUSE
Linux Enterprise Server

Table of Contents
page
Modernize Your Data Center by Migrating
from Itanium/HP-UX to x86/SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Data Center ModernizationWhy and How. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
The Decline of Itanium/HP-UX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Innovation Fuels the Rise of Linux. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server versus HP-UX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Summary and Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Data Center Modernization White Paper

The Case for Migrating from Itanium/HP-UX to x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

Modernize Your Data Center by

Migrating from Itanium/HP-UX to
x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

Discover how migrating from Itanium/HP-UX to x86/

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server can provide you with
greater roadmap certainty, a high rate of innovation
and ISV enthusiasm, and lower software licensing and
maintenance costs in your data centernow and in
the future.

Data Center ModernizationWhy and How

Staying competitive in todays market requires modernizing
your data centers. Why? Modern data center infrastructures allow you to:
Easily take advantage of new innovation
Reduce data center costs by decreasing software licensing,
maintenance and hardware acquisition costs
Increase data center resource utilization by consolidating assets, implementing cloud computing and supporting
application portability
Improve workload performance and lower operating expenses
by using newer, more powerful yet energy efficient hardware
Increase business agility by helping you address technology
and market changes more rapidly
Improve employee productivity by supporting strategies
such as BYOD (bring your own device)
Improve security and management by addressing any gaps
caused by an ever-changing IT landscape
Support a new wave of applications including new solutions
for mobile devices, cloud computing, Big Data, and social
media

Where do you start? Perhaps the two most important areas

to consider when modernizing your data center are implementing virtualization and choosing the right operating system/hardware server platforms. Virtualization enables you to
consolidate multiple workloads, often running on individual
servers, onto significantly fewer virtualization host servers,
reducing data center expenditures substantially. Virtualization
also leads to flexible networks and enables you to move
compute resources, whatever they are, to better respond to
changes in demand. Without virtualization your speed in provisioning and de-provisioning resources is greatly constrained.
Selecting an operating system/hardware server platform for
your data center has long-term consequences. The selection
process must take into account not only features of both

Today, the price, performance, and reliability of

industry-standard x86 servers running Linux have
increased to the point where they can meet or
exceed the capabilities of Itanium/HP-UX.

the operating system and the hardware platform on which

it runs, but the ability of the platform to enable and support
your future business requirements.

The Decline of Itanium/HP-UX

Historically, Itanium/HP-UX has been a competitive UNIX
platform even though Itaniums original performance was
disappointing compared to other RISC processors. However,
in recent years, uncertainty around Intels support for Itanium
processorsas well as the uncertainty about Oracle and Red
Hats continuing support for Itanium with their offeringshas
generated questions about the viability of Itanium long term
and helped draw HP-UXs market share down sharply.
Specifically, in March 2011, Oracle announced that it would discontinue development on Itanium. Prior to this, Red Hat and
Microsoft had announced plans to drop support for Itanium.
An HP lawsuit against Oracle in the latter half of 2011 resulted in
Oracle being ordered to maintain support for Itanium/ HP-UX.
By this time, however, market interest in Itanium/HP-UX had
waned, and orders for Itanium/HP-UX were either delayed or
canceled. HP ended up paying Intel several hundred million
dollars to keep Itanium afloat. Today HP has about 95 percent
of the Itanium server market share, primarily running HP-UX.
As the use of Itanium diminishes, HP-UX has experienced an
annual double-digit market share decline from 10 percent to
more than 20 percent per year,1 beginning in 2008.2
Other issues also dog the platform. Support and maintenance contracts for Itanium/HP-UX platforms continue to be
much more expensive than for x86-64/Linux.3 Itanium server
performance has suffered greatly, especially on a per-core
basis.4 In addition, ISVs are dropping support for applications on Itanium/HP-UX. Lack of innovation around Itanium/
HP-UX limits your ability to take advantage of many new
technologies, such as virtualization, cloud computing and

Itanium/HP-UX is viewed as having an extremely

uncertain roadmap, even for the next few years,
due to lack of market interest in both Itanium
and HP-UX and, most important, lack of interest
in Itanium by Intel.

www.suse.com

new storage technologies that reduce data center costs and

help you be more responsive to changing business needs.

Innovation Fuels the Rise of Linux

What is the alternative? Until recently, x86 servers running
Linux lacked the performance, RAS (reliability, availability
and serviceability), scale-up capabilities and workload management of Itanium/HP-UX platforms used to run missioncritical, back-end database applications. Now, that is no
longer the case.
Intel has incorporated (and continues to add) RAS and scaleup features from its Itanium processors into its x86 Xeon
processors. In addition, HP has incorporated many of the
RAS features from its Itanium-based Superdome 2 hardware
running HP-UX into its ProLiant computers such as the DL
980, which uses multi-core Xeon processors. These features
include improved interprocessor communication, higher interconnect bandwidth, machine check architecture recovery,
double device correction and more.
These types of enhancements have made SUSE Linux Enter
prise Server running on HPs x86-based servers very compe
titive with its Itanium/HP-UX platforms in terms of RAS, I/O
speed, processor performance, resiliency and more. In other
words, today, the price, performance and reliability of x86/
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server platforms now meet or exceed
the capabilities of Itanium/HP-UX.5
Just as important, many of the innovative technologies used
to modernize data centers are built for Linux and x86 servers, and virtually none of them are associated with Itanium/
HP-UX. Staying with Itanium/HP-UX limits your ability to
modernize your data center and effectively locks you in.
__________
1 IDC Worldwide Server Operating Environments Shipments and
Installed Base, 19962016, August 2012.
2 www.informationweek.com/software/enterprise-applications/
oracle-resumes-hp-itanium-support-for-n/240006723
3 www.pcworld.com/article/223360/Oracle.html
4 www.zdnet.com/blog/howlett/hp-superdome-dead-as-a-dodo/
4194
5 http://docs.media.bitpipe.com/io_10x/io_106502/item_582322/
TT 12-188 HP Unix to Linux Migration revised.pdf

Data Center Modernization White Paper

The Case for Migrating from Itanium/HP-UX to x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

As a result, enterprises are migrating from Itanium/HP-UX to

x86/Linux platforms running new multi-core, scale-up x86
servers such as the HP DL980 Xeon 7500 series servers,
x86 AMD and Intel servers from IBM such as the IBM System
x3690, and PowerEdge M910 and R910 servers from Dell. In
fact, for many corporations with an HP-UX installed base,
migrating legacy Itanium and PA-RISC/HP-UX systems to

x86/Linuxespecially SUSE Linux Enterprise Serveris the

centerpiece of their data center modernization initiatives.
Today x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server offers the features/
technologies of RISC/UNIX, plus higher performance, greater
interoperability and openness to innovation all at a lower
cost, as shown in Table 1 below.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server versus HP-UX

Table 1 provides a detailed comparison of the features and technologies available in x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and
Itanium/HP-UX.
Table 1: Comparison of Features/Technologies Available in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and HP-UX
Technologies

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (for x86)

HP-UX (for Itanium)

File system

Ships with several different file systems, including btrfs, ext3

(default for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server), ext2, ReiserFS, XFS
(open source version) and OCFS2. Each has advantages and
disadvantages.6

Includes the VERITAS File System (VxFS), sometimes called JFS

and Online JFS in HP-UX. Originally developed by VERITAS
Software, VxFS is an extent-based file system.

A file system comparison table is located at: www.suse.com7

Predictive
self-healing

Requires hardware support to be fully effective. SUSE is working

with all major hardware vendors, especially IBM and Intel,
to optimize integration of hardware and operating system in
this area.

VxFS is also supported on AIX, Linux, Solaris and OpenSolaris. It is

comparable to other UNIX file systems such as Oracle Sun ZFS.
Supports automatic mitigation of software/hardware errors, such
as admin notifications, isolation/deactivation of faulty components
and guided repair.

Supports proactive notifications. Technologies such as MCELog

help administrators with early warning about upcoming hardware
issues that might impact the stability of the operating system
and applications.
Dynamic tracing
framework

Ships with SystemTap, a scripting language and tool for

dynamically instrumenting running production Linux operating
systems.

HP offers a tool called Calipera general-purpose performance

analysis tool for applications, processes and systems. HP Caliper
allows administrators and developers to understand application
performance and execution and identify ways to improve runtime
performance.

Security/
certification

Meets Common Criteria Certification at Evaluation Assurance

Level 4+ (EAL4+).

HP-UX 11i has been submitted for evaluation under Common

Criteria Controlled Access Protection Profile Evaluation Assurance
Level 4 (EAL4).

Is FIPS 140 certified for the openSSL module.

Virtualization

Interoperable with leading open source and proprietary thirdparty hypervisors:

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server ships with Xen and KVM, and
can be used to create virtual host environments that support
Linux and Windows guests.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server itself is a supported guest
operating system in virtual environments created using KVM,
Xen, VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix XenServer.
Linux Containers (see next page) is another supported virtuali
zation technology.

6 http://doc.opensuse.org/products/draft/SLES/SLES-storage_sd_
draft/filesystems.html
7 www.suse.com/products/server/technical-information

HP-UX supports hardware partitions (nPars) and virtual

partitions (vPars), specifically for Itanium-based Integrity servers.
nPars provide complete electrical isolation between partitions.
Also provided is HP Integrity Virtual Machines, a technology
similar to Xen, HP-UX Containers, Linux Containers, and Oracle
Solaris Containers.
HP-UX virtualization technology does not interoperate with other
common virtualization technologies except in a limited fashion
using HP Integrity Virtual Machines.

Continued on next page

 Technologies

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (for x86)

HP-UX (for Itanium)

Containers

Supports Linux Containers (LXC), an operating system-level

virtualization method for running multiple isolated Linux systems
(containers) on a single control host.

HP-UX Containers provide an environment for consolidating

multiple workloads within a single image of HP-UX 11i v3, similar
to Linux Containers and Oracle Solaris Containers.

LXC relies on the Linux kernel cgroups functionality that became

available in version 2.6.24.
In principle, both Linux Containers and HP-UX Containers are
similar. They are virtualization technologies at the application
level, so they are above the operating system kernel. Unlike
hypervisor-based virtualization, they do not add an additional
software layer.
Clusters

Combined with SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability

Extension, you can implement mission-critical Linux clusters
using OCFS2, a shared-disk, and POSIX-compliant generic
cluster file system.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server also is supported by other
third-party cluster products, including Veritas Cluster Server
and HP Serviceguard.

HP Serviceguard is a solid clustering technology with features and

functionality similar to Solaris Clusters.
HP Serviceguard can be purchased as part of the HP-UX High
Availability Operating Environment (HA-OE), the Data Center
Operating Environment (DC-OE), or as a standalone product for
HP-UX 11i v3.

Hardware platforms
supported

x86, x86-64, POWER, Itanium, IBM mainframe

Itanium (IA-64)

Cloud computing

Using SUSE Cloud you can build and deploy private clouds
within your firewall. SUSE Cloud is based on the popular
OpenStack, open source project, and is integrated with SUSE
Manager and SUSE Studio to provide management and
application development for SUSE Cloud as well as other
cloud platforms.

HP has two basic cloud offerings: HP Cloud Service and HP

CloudSystem. HP Cloud Service is built around OpenStack for
x86/Linux.

Various third-party cloud management tools, such as Aeolus

and ConVirt, are also available to manage SUSE Cloud-based
private clouds. SUSE Cloud interoperates with other cloud
platforms built around OpenStack.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is available through more than
50 public cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services,
Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.

HP CloudSystem is not so much a platform as it is a collection of

intersecting HP products and roadmaps to get cloud capabilities.
Some of these HP products are basically old HP offerings stamped
cloud.
HP CloudSystem supports both HP Integrity servers (Itaniumbased) and x86 servers. It supports Windows, Linux and HP-UX
operating systems, as well as VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V,
KVM and HP Integrity virtual machines.
HPs cloud offerings are complex to install and configure.
Most enterprises selecting HP Cloud System end up hiring HPs
professional services group to either implement clouds or, at least,
help implement clouds.

RAS

Combination of new multi-core, scale-up AMD/Intel hardware

married with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server compares favorably
with Itanium/HP-UX with respect to RAS. Today RAS can no
longer be used to differentiate Itanium/HP-UX and x86/SUSE
Linux Enterprise Server.

Itanium/HP-UX is still one of the top three UNIX platforms in

terms of RAS.

ISV enthusiasm

ISV enthusiasm for x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

dramatically exceeds that for Itanium/ HP-UX. Increasingly,
ISVs like SAP are using Linux as their development platform
and porting to Itanium/HP-UX only if there is sufficient demand.

Itanium/HP-UX market share is dropping at a fast pace, leading

ISVs to port to Itanium/HP-UX only when absolutely necessary.

10,000+ ISV applications are certified to run on SUSE Linux

Enterprise Server.

Continued on next page

www.suse.com

Data Center Modernization White Paper

The Case for Migrating from Itanium/HP-UX to x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

Technologies

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (for x86)

HP-UX (for Itanium)

High Performance
Computing (HPC)

Linux dominates the Top500 List of the worlds largest supercomputers with 94 percent of the supercomputers running
Linux. And SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is running on many
of them.

Itanium/HP-UX used to be a leader in the HPC market.

Today, Itanium/HP-UX has only a single system on the Top500
supercomputer list. Its performance on a per-core basis (based
on SPEC processor benchmarks) has dropped significantly
below that of x86 multi-core servers from AMD and Intel
running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (see the Performance
table entry below).

HPC business applications, referred to as crossover HPC

applications, are also preferred on x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server. High-performance computer clusters running crossover
applications are typically smaller than supercomputer clusters.

Crossover HPC applications can run on Itanium/HP-UX, but the

cost of an Itanium/HP-UX platform would be almost prohibitive.

Innovation

x86/Linux is at the center of innovation for technologies used to

modernize data centers. Open access to source code encourages
innovation, as does a vibrant, growing community.

Today, HP is effectively the only supporter of Itanium/HP-UX.

Innovation, if any, on this platform is being done by HP. No external
innovation is happening.

Cost

x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server platforms are a fraction of the

cost of Itanium/HP-UX platforms. The big differences are cost of
the Itanium servers, licensing of HP-UX, and maintenance for the
Itanium platform.

The cost of HP-UX varies depending on the operating environment

(OE) and the Itanium-based Integrity server used.

Because the per-core performance of x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise

Server is often 2x that of Itanium/HP-UX, you have big savings
on application licensing because you need fewer cores (and
sockets) to run those applications.

Performance

x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is a clear winner on performance tests, especially the core SPEC performance benchmarks.
These benchmarks include SPECint, SPECfp, SPECint_rate, and
SPECfp_rate. The results of SPEC benchmarks can be found at:
www.spec.org

HP-UX with the Data Center OE with clustering and virtualization

wrapped together has a per core cost of over US$4,000.8,9
The cost of a five-year Priority subscription for a 32 core
(four socket) IBM Xeon 7560 is US$12,000. The one time cost
of an HP-UX license for the HP Integrity rx8640 with 32 cores is
US$128,000. And the IBM Xeon 7560 provides 2x the performance
per core.
x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on SPECint, SPECfp,
SPECint_rate and SPECfp_rate benchmarks (www.spec.org)
clearly outperforms Itanium/HP-UX by a factor of 2x on a percore basis.

When SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, running on Dell, HP, and

IBM x86 servers, are compared to HP-UX running on HP Itanium
servers such as the Integrity rx8640, the SPEC benchmarks
show that x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is, across the
board, approximately 2x faster than Itanium servers at a
fraction of the cost.
Big Data support

SUSE partners with a wide variety of Big Data technology

partners such as Teradata, SAP (with SAP HANA), IBM,
Cloudera, Hortonworks and others.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server supports the open Hadoop
f ramework for processing Big Data. SUSE also provides the
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension to run
multiple clusters for Big Data processing.

8 www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2010/
nextgenerationintegrity/NGISHPUXMarch2010.pdf
9 http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx%2F4AA35947ENW.pdf

Itanium/HP-UX provides no visible support for Big Data.

Summary and Conclusion

Itanium/HP-UX still has excellent RAS capabilities. It could
also have been a formidable competitor to Linux for the
back-end, mission-critical database applications market
were Itanium to have not lost favor in the market. Today,
Itanium/HP-UX is viewed as having:
An extremely uncertain roadmap, even for the next few
years. This is due to lack of market interest in both Itanium
and HP-UX and, most importantly, lack of interest in Itanium
by Intel. In short, HP-UX is a dying platform
A lack of the technology, interoperability and innovation
necessary to modernize data centers and to accommodate
new IT trends such as cloud computing, Big Data, mobile
devices and social media
A confusing cloud computing strategy and product offering
Costly operating system licensing and costly hardware
Poor per-core performance
Limited virtualization, and limited interoperability and
integration with other virtualization software
Rapidly dropping ISV enthusiasm
Lock-in

www.suse.com

In contrast, x86/SUSE Enterprise Linux Server offers the interoperability, openness to innovation, higher performance
and lower cost necessary for success today and tomorrow.
As a result:
x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is an excellent platform
for replacing your more costly, lower performing Itanium/
HP-UX systems.
x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is an excellent platform
for modernizing your data center.
x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server offers the affordability,
interoperability and innovation necessary to support modern
data centers in the face of new technologies such as cloud
computing, Big Data, mobile devices and social media.

x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is a preferred

ISV development platform while Itanium/HP-UX
is a secondary platform to which applications may
only be ported if demand warrants.

Contact your local SUSE Solutions Provider,

or call SUSE at:
1 800 796 3700 U.S./Canada
1 801 861 4500 Worldwide
SUSE
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90409 Nuremberg
Germany

www.suse.com

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