Virtualizing Legacy PA-RISC Based Servers and Applications
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Virtualizing Legacy PA-RISC Based Servers and Applications Patrick Wallek Critical Systems Software Engineer Service IT Direct ©2018 Service IT Direct, Inc. All rights reserved. Virtualizing Legacy PA-RISC Based Servers and Applications Table of Contents Abstract 3 Customer Problems 3 Customer 1 Legacy Configuration 4 Test & Development Servers 4 Production Servers 4 Totals 5 Customer 2 Legacy Configuration 6 Servers & Storage 6 Totals 7 Solution 8 What are HP9000 Containers? 8 Customer 1 Solution 9 Customer 2 Solution 10 Container Setup 11 Conclusion 12 About Service IT Direct 13 2 www.serviceitdirect.com ©2018 Service IT Direct, Inc. All rights reserved. Virtualizing Legacy PA-RISC Based Servers and Applications Abstract Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) offers a product called HPE 9000 Containers. This product allows you to virtualize older, legacy, PA-RISC based HP-UX servers and their applications onto newer Itanium-based HP-UX servers. In this white paper we will explore how Service IT Direct has used this product with two of its customers to increase their application performance and availability while decreasing rack space usage, power and cooling requirements, and maintenance costs. Customer Problems Service IT Direct was approached by two customers asking for a solution that would allow them to modernize their aging PA-RISC based hardware, running HP-UX, and storage environment. However, they still need to run legacy versions of the HP-UX operating system and their databases and applications currently in production. Some of the reasons given for this request were: age of the hardware; increasing number of service calls for the hardware; increasing cost of hardware maintenance; system and application performance, or lack thereof; lack of system redundancy; rack space usage; power inefficiency. Both customers also wanted redundancy built into the new solution. Part of their legacy systems and applications ran two manufacturing plants. If a system went down, then manufacturing was severely impacted. 3 www.serviceitdirect.com ©2018 Service IT Direct, Inc. All rights reserved. Virtualizing Legacy PA-RISC Based Servers and Applications Customer 1 Legacy Configuration CUSTOMER BACKUP Test & Development Servers RESULTS • HP9000 A500 o 2 x 550 MHz CPUs Disk-to-disk hot backups of o 5 GB RAM the Oracle databases were o 140 GB Disk Space run nightly. o HP-UX 11.11 o Running custom legacy application The database sizes, at the • HP9000 D390 time these results were o 2 x 240 MHz CPUs recorded, were: o 1.5 GB RAM PROD: 550 GB o 190 GB Disk Space NV: 90 GB o HP-UX 10.20 WIPROD: 75 GB o Running Oracle Applications 10.7 WFCPROD: 25 GB • HP9000 L1000 o 2 x 360 MHz CPUs On the legacy physical o 8 GB RAM systems, the backups ran in: o 3.5 TB Disk Space ▪ StorageTek disk array PROD: 5.1 hours o HP-UX 11.00 NV: 1.3 hours o WIPROD: 1 hour Running Oracle 8i and 9i databases WFCPROD: 30 minutes • HP9000 L2000 o 2 x 440 MHz CPUs On the new containerized o 2 GB RAM system, with new disk o 34 GB Disk Space storage, the backups ran in: o HP-UX 11.00 o Running Oracle Web Forms & Reports PROD: 1.5 hours NV: 50 minutes Production Servers WIPROD: 15 minutes • HP9000 K580 WFCPROD: 10 minutes o 6 x 240 MHz CPUs o 4 GB RAM These improvements in o 340 GB Disk Space backup speed were very well ▪ 2 Fibre attached disk trays (JBOD) received by the customer. o HP-UX 10.20 o Running Oracle Applications 10.7 4 www.serviceitdirect.com ©2018 Service IT Direct, Inc. 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Virtualizing Legacy PA-RISC Based Servers and Applications • HP9000 L1000 o 4 x 360 MHz CPUs CUSTOMER SQLPLUS o 1 GB RAM QUERY RESULTS o 314 GB Disk Space o HP-UX 11.00 o Running Legacy HR applications In order to establish some • performance metrics for HP9000 L2000 both the physical and o 2 x 440 MHz CPUs containerized systems I ran o 2 GB RAM a simple SQLPLUS select o 72 GB Disk Space statement against a o HP-UX 11.00 database table with o Running MicroFocus COBOL license manager approximately 45 million • HP9000 L2000 records. o 2 x 440 MHz CPUs o 6 GB RAM o 72 GB Disk Space SQLPLUS statement: select o HP-UX 11.00 count(*) from o Running Oracle Web Forms & Reports inv.mtl_material_transactio ns; • HP9000 N4000 o 8 x 440 MHz CPUs o 16 GB RAM Physical system: o 4 TB Disk Space ▪ 10 Fibre attached disk trays (JBOD) Run 1: 14 min 43.75 sec ▪ StorageTek Disk Array Run 2: 15 min 7.05 sec o HP-UX 11.0 o Running Oracle 8i & 9i databases Containerized system: Totals Run 1: 39.41 sec • Servers – 9 Run 2: 36.92 sec • RAM – 37.5 GB • Storage – 8.5 TB • Rack Units – 157 (approx. 3.5 Racks) • Watts of Power – 29,300 5 www.serviceitdirect.com ©2018 Service IT Direct, Inc. 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Virtualizing Legacy PA-RISC Based Servers and Applications Customer 2 Legacy Configuration CUSTOMER ORACLE APPLICATIONS JOBS Servers & Storage • HP9000 D370 o 2 x 160 MHz CPUs Oracle Applications is a o 2 GB RAM major part of the o 220 GB Disk Space customer’s business. o HP-UX 10.20 Because of that it was o General HP-UX test for legacy applications important to establish that those jobs were running • HP9000 K370 significantly faster as well. o 4 x 200 MHz CPUs o 4 GB RAM o 278 GB Disk Space Two typically long running o HP-UX 10.20 jobs are “Load NV Item o Running Oracle 7.3.4 databases Costs” and “DPS Insert • HP9000 K370 Usage”. o 4 x 200 MHz CPUs o 4 GB RAM o 311 GB Disk Space The run time of the “Load o HP-UX 10.20 NV Item Costs” job was: o Running custom legacy applications Physical: 1 hour • HP9000 K570 Containerized: 15 min o 6 x 200 MHz CPUs o 4 GB RAM The run time of the “DPS o 223 GB Disk Space Insert Usage” job was: o HP-UX 10.20 o Running custom legacy applications Physical: 1 hour • HP9000 rp5450 Containerized: 6 min o 4 x 440 MHz CPUs o 8 GB RAM o 400 GB Disk Space o HP-UX 11.00 o Running Oracle 8.1.7 databases 6 www.serviceitdirect.com ©2018 Service IT Direct, Inc. All rights reserved. Virtualizing Legacy PA-RISC Based Servers and Applications • HP9000 rp5450 o 4 x 440 MHz CPUs CUSTOMER ORACLE o 8 GB RAM APPLICATIONS REPORT o 202 GB Disk Space SERVER o HP-UX 11.00 o Running Oracle 7.3.4 databases Since Oracle Applications • HP9000 rp5450 are such an important part o 4 x 440 MHz CPUs of the customer’s business, o 8 GB RAM it was important to verify o that reports run through 510 GB Disk Space Oracle Applications were o HP-UX 11.00 also performing better in o Running Oracle 8.1.7 databases the new containerized • HP9000 rp5450 system. o 4 x 440 MHz CPUs o 16 GB RAM The customer receives a report that details the o 560 GB Disk Space number of report requests o HP-UX 11.11 processed, the total run o Running custom legacy applications time, longest wait time and • Storage average wait time for the o LUNs presented from Hitachi disk array previous 24 hours. Totals • Servers – 8 Physical system: Total requests: 5,942 • RAM – 54 GB Total Run Time: 24.04 Hrs • Storage – 2.7 TB Avg. wait time: 1.06 Min • Rack Units – 102 Longest wait time: 87.58 • Watts of Power – 17,600 Min As you can see, each of the two customers had quite a Containerized System: collection of legacy servers running multiple versions of HP- Total requests: 5,627 UX, various applications and multiple versions of Oracle Total Run Time: 5.44 Hrs databases. Avg. wait time: 0.76 Min Longest wait time: 21.02 This poses quite a challenge because no Itanium based HP- Min UX servers are capable of running any of the older versions of HP-UX. These was an impressive Another challenge we faced was finding sufficient storage, at increase in performance. a reasonable price, for each customer that also allowed for redundancy in an HPE Serviceguard cluster. 7 www.serviceitdirect.com ©2018 Service IT Direct, Inc. All rights reserved. Virtualizing Legacy PA-RISC Based Servers and Applications Solution CUSTOMER What are HP9000 Containers? FEEDBACK The solution we came up with for both customers was to utilize a product developed by HPE called HPE 9000 Feedback from the Containers. accounting department: From the HPE 9000 Containers product page: “The long running reports that I ran that normally take “HPE 9000 Containers is a set of tools designed to enable 1 hour took between 1 - 8 quick transition of application environment from an HPE 9000 minutes.” server with PA-RISC processor to an HPE Integrity server. HPE 9000 Containers allows rehosting the complete HPE 9000 user-space environment without recompiling or reinstalling “The daily Cognos cube ran individual applications, or reconstructing the application in 14 minutes. Normal time ecosystem, with minimal reconfiguration and application is 30 min. [MS] Access is inventory preparation effort.” running extremely fast, connecting to [the] NV This is the key part of solution for both customers. This [database]. Kronos product gives you the ability to migrate HP-UX 10.20, 11.0, timecards ran in half the 11.11 and 11.23 workloads from PA-RISC based systems to a time, before time was 7 container on an Itanium based system running HP-UX 11.31.