HPE bows to inevitable: Integrity servers get latest Itanium engine and container off-ramp

HPE is introducing a new generation of its mission-critical Integrity/HP-UX servers and providing a Linux container migration route to x86 server-land. The Integrity i6 models represent an entire refresh of the Integrity server line, and use Intel Itanium 9700 series processors, otherwise known as the Kittson line. These …

[Anonymous Coward]

Itanic, the end

So, end of the line for Itanic with the always pushed back Pullson it seems.

I've done a lot of HP-UX (PA and Itanium) and it really is sad, to see HP(E) never really delivered anything exciting with HP-UX or Itanium.

Late CPU, outclassed everywhere, due to reluctancy of Intel, absolutely mad-shit and museum-class obsolete SAN sub-System, that, back in 11.0 if I recall correctly, forced you to issue a SAN LUNs rescanning in the Background, then do something else for 5 minutes, before the scan was complete (on a correctly zoned SAN). They only got a real disk Subsystem OK with 11iV3, which is my understanding is the last one.

And quite poor virtualization (above the Hosting OS) ...

Good riddance HP-UX/Itanium, even if you paid the bill for Long ...

[Dazed and Confused]

Re: Itanic, the end

> And quite poor virtualization (above the Hosting OS) ...

Not sure I'd consider it quite poor, I think the handling of virtual storage devices in HP-UX is much better than it is in Linux. I really miss the way that HP-UX maps NPIV virtual fibre channels into virtual HBAs in the guests is much better than the way that with libvirt you need to make the NPIV FC visible in the host and then create a storage pool presenting the LUNs as volumes to your guests. The HP-UX design means the guests storage doesn't need to be visible to host and the array can easily present straight to the guest.

[Dirk Munk]

The Itanium was dead before it appeared

The concept of the Itanium was wrong, even before you could actually buy a computer with an Itanium, IBM and DEC/Compaq already heavily criticized its design and architectural set up. And they were right. What people seem to forget is that this CPU was going to be the successor of the x86, if Intel would have had its way. It was only after AMD came with the 64 bit version of the x86 architecture that Intel was forced to go that way.

That incredible moron Mike Capellas destroyed the Alpha CPU, and replace it by the Itanium. Most likely to make Compaq a better marriage candidate for HP. Many of the Alpha's design features can be found in today's CPUs. Its memory access speed was still the fastest in the world, years after it went out of production. If HP would have used that CPU instead of the doomed Itanium, combined with Tru64 Unix, instead of that antiquated HP-UX, they still might have been a producer of high-end servers and operating systems.today, instead of just another x86 box producer.

[Denarius]

Re: The Itanium was dead before it appeared

AFAIK, many of the Alpha designers went to AMD, hence the x64 capabilities of later Intel CPUs. Intel initially said "A line in sand, Not possible to mix 32 and 64 bit operations in a CPU". AMD then did it so well, Intel licensed the ideas. Revenge is a dish best served cold. Ironically the Itanic isn't.

And so, another company, OS and architecture submerge in the swamp of history. Pity, I liked the old SPARC HPUX despite its idiosyncrasies. True64 OTOH, was fast and utterly feral in its OS layout.

[Anonymous Coward]

HPE is killing Lenovo and grabbing up as many of IBM's Server Support Staff, as they can. Go HPE!!!

[Mike 16]

I still kinda yearn

for an Itanium pizza-box running VMS. But then, my only Itanium experience was installing Linux (SUSE, IIRC) on a Bull server as part of my "stuff generally needing doing" at a startup.

One of those cute 90Mhz Alpha boxes (well, mini Burg-Kalifas) would help scratch that itch, though. If only I can shovel out some space currently occupied by my "laptop museum" (TRS80-Model 100 to PowerBookG4)

[JoJ]

Re: I still kinda yearn

I am here for the sovereign wealth fund buyout, so we can hope to keep on schedule with those shiiiiti filling dump trucks they need to keep on moving so we don't have the view spoiled on the 99th floor by backpressure from the stack... HPE said the NVcrapeEx interface was coming, City Wide for 2012...

Meantime, the one up man's jittery between the tabs and the Kuntluneramic Hoowee Dowsers demands that you get this branding right. It's

Burgh KAL-=-ALPHA_SERVER UA45 if you please!