HP 9000 Containers - Overview

What's New

HP 9000 Containers A.03.01.04 released (October 17, 2012).

Refer to Release Notes for additional details.

HP 9000 Containers solution overview

The HP 9000 Containers solution aims to significantly simplify transition from PA-RISC based HP 9000 HP-UX 11i v1 (and later) servers to HP Integrity HP-UX 11i v3 servers. Traditionally ARIES based transition has required effort intensive and sometimes error-prone inventory collection of the applications under transition considerations. For complex application environments identifying application dependencies and components is sometimes tedious.

HP 9000 Containers solution provides the ability to replicate HP 9000 HP-UX eco-system and create chroot isolated virtual HP 9000 file system. The solution delivers tools and scripts to create, configure and manage HP 9000 Container using HP-UX Containers. The HP 9000 Container solution is completely ARIES based execution environment. Since the solution is built around replication of full application and HP-UX OE eco-system, it naturally eliminates the need for complex dependency analysis and inventory collection.

When using this solution it is important that detailed production level testing be performed before actual migration. There is a chance that some latent application or emulation defect may get exposed in the specific environment being migrated.

HP 9000 Containers features

• Tools and scripts for creation, configuration and management of HP 9000 Containers.
• Flexibility to use any of the storage backup solution on HP 9000 HP-UX servers which can restore to a file system directory.
• Ability to re-use HP-UX Ignite backup archives for building container file system.
• Ability to integrate HP 9000 Containers with Serviceguard for high availability application envionments. Both, classic model (application fail-over) and container as a package model (container fail-over) are supported.
• Container life cycle management - start, stop, status, add, modify and delete.
• RC and automatic re-spawn support for services inside the containers.
• IPC isolation from host environment (global compartment) and other containers on the same host system.
• Completely isolated HP 9000 file system when using the system container model.
• Container specific IP address.
• Container export/import facility to backup and restore container configuration and file system contents.

When to use HP 9000 Containers

HP 9000 Containers are ARIES based execution environment with original HP-UX eco-system. Thus the applications under transition consideration must be suitable for ARIES emulation i.e. only user space applications are supported. If any application depends on kernel modules or specific device drivers it will not work correctly under HP 9000 Containers environment. Refer to ARIES binary compatibility and product support statement

It is highly recommended to do exhaustive testing before migrating to production. This is necessary to uncover any latent application or emulation defects that get exposed in the container environment

While stand-alone ARIES based transition may be preferred path for standard ISV applications, HP 9000 Containers solution would be better alternatitve for transition of legacy environments comprising mostly custom applications. Use HP 9000 Containers solution if.

• The application environment is very old and the information about application components and dependencies is not readily available.
• The application environment is very complex such that it is difficult to extract few applications along with relevant dependencies.
• The transition project aims to modernize large fleet of PA-RISC based HP 9000 HP-UX servers.
• Ideal for running PoC (proof of concept) testing of applications for ARIES mode deployment consideration.

How to get started

• Download and install HP-UX Containers, HP ARIES patch and HP 9000 Containers.
• Identify list of HP 9000 servers for Integrity transition.
• Identify list of key ISV applications for working out support and license migration (as applicable) with respective application vendors.
• Create local file system backup using any storage backup solution which can restore to a file system directory.
• Restore the file system backup image to HP Integrity HP-UX 11i v3 server inside a directory.
• Create and configure an HP 9000 Container.
• Allocate sufficient CPU and memory resources for the HP 9000 Containers - use PRM (Process Resource Manager) groups if necessary.
• Make sure to go through HP 9000 Containers Administrator's Guide