Last week, Oracle’s announced its decision to discontinue all software development on the Intel Itanium microprocessor. Apparently, Oracle contends that its decision was predicated on Intel’s “faltering commitment” to Itanium. The reporter surmises that Oracle wants HP’s enterprise server money, and this is a means to that end.
The day after that announcement, The Register reported Intel president and chief executive officer Paul Otellini’s rebuttal statement saying, “Intel’s work on Intel Itanium processors and platforms continues unabated with multiple generations of chips currently in development and on schedule. We remain firmly committed to delivering a competitive, multi-generational roadmap for HP-UX and other operating system customers that run the Itanium architecture.”
The aforementioned article also reports HP’s statement saying, “…it [HP] would be supporting its customers despite ‘Oracle’s anti-customer actions,’ which were the result of plummeting Sparc server sales and the desire by Oracle to force customers to buy its own servers if they want to use Oracle software.”
So, what are the options for HP-UX customers running Oracle? One option (that Oracle is betting against) is a database migration to PostgreSQL. To date, PostgreSQL has not supported the HP-UX platform very well. This will change in early Q2 when EnterpriseDB introduces full support for the HP-UX platform via our Postgres Plus Advanced Server.
EnterpriseDB’s Postgres Plus Advanced Server provides a comprehensive Oracle compatibility solution. Postgres Plus Advanced Server lets you replicate your applications and the data from production Oracle databases to Postgres Plus seamlessly, with virtually no need to re-write your application. Our solution supports a wide range of use cases, like reporting and business intelligence applications as well as most other enterprise applications your company uses to run its business.
If you’re an HP-UX customer and you want to continue to leverage HP’s hardware performance, consider migrating off Oracle to PostgreSQL via EnterpriseDB. You’ll save a lot of money [understatement], you’ll avoid more Oracle lock-in, and you can continue to leverage your valuable investment in HP-UX servers, confident that both the hardware and PostgreSQL database software will be well supported for the long term.
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Oracle is abandoning HP-UX customers…Fight back!
Leandro, all:
We used to have “full support” for HP-UX. Recently it dropped of the radar (and off the BuildFarm, more importantly). This blog post alerted us to the declining support, so we contacted some project supporters who will be providing Buildfarm test servers to make sure HP-UX and Itanium are fully supported.
Per Ed’s announcement, EDB will be offering packaging for HP-UX, so HP-UX users will once again be able to feel first-class supported on PostgreSQL.
However, if you are an HP-UX user, we strongly encourage you to get involved in testing PostgreSQL on your platform, as we need more testers!
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/HowToBetaTest
–Josh Berkus, PostgreSQL Project
I hope that there will be a 64bit EnterpriseDB for HP-UX 11.23 and 11.31 that uses BSD type sockets and not the POSIX type sockets that are default in postgres’ build process.
All other interfaces (Oracle, Perl/DBI) default to BSD type sockets, causing binding to libpq to fail any connection to postgres databases.
@leonardo: It is very easy to build postgres from source on HP-UX PA-Risc. Almost out-of the box. For both 32bit and 64bit environments. Itanium is relatively much harder to get right, mostly because of this socket issue.
Already before the Oracle anouncement, we were looking for an alternative of the Oracle Database, since it was just too expensive. But where to go ? MySQL ? That’s Oracle too now, so no thanks.
And thanks to Oracle themselves, I heard about the Oracle compatibility of PostgreSQL. I’m already waiting for the supported release on HP-UX to see if we can replace our Oracle-based dataguard solution with a much cheaper EntepriseDB solution, and then later (hopefully) forget Oracle all the way.
Hurray for Oracle ! They really helped me save money this time.
My thoughts on the challenge facing HP customers:
http://ninalytton.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/how-should-customers-respond-to-oracle-discontinuing-itanium-support/
Are they locked in, or do they have options? :-0 Why don’t you post some comments? Best, Nina
Leandro,
To clarify, the community currently has an HP-UX build, but it has not been a supported platform by EnterpriseDB. ED
Duncan,
We started this work last year based on global customer demand prior to the announcement. ED
[...] Hewlett-Packard’s Integrity servers are based on Itanium chips and run its HP-UX OS. PostgreSQL, the open-source database at the core of EnterpriseDB’s products, historically has not supported HP-UX “very well,” CEO Ed Boyajian said in a blog post late Monday. [...]
[...] Hewlett-Packard’s Integrity servers are based on Itanium chips and run its HP-UX OS. PostgreSQL, the open-source database at the core of EnterpriseDB’s products, historically has not supported HP-UX “very well,” CEO Ed Boyajian said in a blog post late Monday. [...]
Ed,
Out of interest, is this a response to the Oracle anouncement, or were you always planning to release on HP-UX?
Duncan
How come PostgreSQL has not supported HP-UX well?