Hi guys!
I have a client, which time to time has a strange problem.
Information about the environmen:
OpenEdge: 10.2B0817 (64-bit)
OS info: HP-UX B.11.31 (64-bit)
Platform info: Superdome2 16s
Memory: 1572260 MB (1535.41 GB)
Storage: HP 3Par 7450 (SSD only)
Sometimes the database falls from Memory violation errors. sometimes it falls with memory read error (something like corrupt block detected when reading from database), but after restart, the error in the data blocks are disappearing. Errors come and go - they can not reproduce, they happen by accident.
Experts from the HP technical support tested all hardware and researched system logs - but nothing was found, all is good, everything works on the system level, no system errors. They said that this problems in Progress.
So, I suspect that the OpenEdge are not optimized to run on HP-UX but first I would like to ask you:
I will be grateful to you if you share your experience with this OS, for any answers which will help to making the decision!
Regards,
a.mishin
We are on HP-UX 11.31 ai 64-bit OpenEdge 11.4
Machines are 860c
Memory 96 GB
Storage 9500
In the past we had problems with memory violation errors ( 9/10 OE during testing) , I would report it to Progress and then they would fix the memory violation errors with some Hot Fixes.
How many memory segments do you have?
We are (unfortunately) still running HP-UX 11iv3. We are using OE 11.3 and are planning to upgrade to OE 11.6 in the next year.
If you want to know the HP roadmap for HP-UX you can go to their website: www.hpe.com/.../4AA3-9071ENW.pdf
It appears that HP has plans to support the OS "at least" thru 2025. It is no wonder they are keeping it alive considering they get a steady source of income from it with virtually no new investment costs. There is a new Intel chip due (Itanium IA64) to be released some day (Kittson), but they've been saying that for many years. HP-UX only runs on Itanium. Unless it is a very short-term ROI, I doubt there will be many people purchasing this new chip if/when it arrives, especially given the fact that it is probably the last IA64 ever, and is probably only being created for contractual reasons.
On the OE side of things we have had a handful of "HP-UX-specific" support cases. Based on those, my impression is that the customers on the HP-UX side are a lot fewer than the ones running X64-based operating systems (Linux/CentOs and Windows). I always run a copy OE software on Windows and I always hope to repro the same bug over there because, frankly, it is a lot easier to get OE support on the Windows (or Linux) side of things than on HP-UX. Progress technical support has VM farms that run on the x64-based hardware (ie. Linux and Windows OS'es). Given this VM infrastructure, it is very easy for them to get a repro running on Windows and Linux. My experience is that they start providing support for a Windows-based issue about 1-2 days sooner than for an HP-UX-based issue.
The HP-UX-specific issues which we've run into (ie. the ones not reproducible in Windows) have typically been performance-related. And Progress will indeed support that platform. I have always been pleased with the results of my technical support incidents; although I'm more pleased with the incidents which I can open using a Windows-based repro.
Here is another thread about HP-UX:
community.progress.com/.../23375
Here is how I would answer your questions:
>> •How many of you are working with OpenEdge on HP-UX?
You should call your Progress sales rep and see if they can give you some insight into the ratio of their HP-UX customers as compared to the others. I've asked this question many times (from Progress technical support representatives) and the impression I've always gotten from the individuals is that their support calls from HP-UX are far fewer than from Windows/Linux. But this doesn't accurately reflect the numbers of paying customers.
•This is a popular OS among Progress customers?
"Popular" is not the word. Probably most forward-looking customers are looking at Linux or Windows, especially since HPE has put an end-of-life date on HP-UX. Obviously Linux and Windows wouldn't publish an end-of-life.
•Are there any peculiarities of work with OpenEdge RDBMS on this OS?
Not so much. I'm assuming you already know your memory violations are from the database and not the ABL clients? On the ABL client side of things (especially appserver) there can be peculiarities.
•Maybe it's a good idea to migrate to another operating system? But what then?
Yes. At least plan on doing it before the HPE roadmap's end-of-life (2025).
•Or will be enough to upgrade to the latest version of the OpenEdge? But is there any guarantee that the new version will work best?
Possibly. 10.2B08 is a pretty old version, although last time I looked at their life-cycle documentation, 10.2B08 was still supported. (As I recall Progress had a "TBD" in the "expiration" column, for what that's worth.)
If you are going to upgrade the version of OE anyway, you might get a bigger "bang for the buck" by getting off HP-UX instead of hanging on until the bitter end. That's just my 2 cents. But if you are still on HP-UX then there are probably some "non-technical" reasons keeping you there (lack of trust in an alternative, lack of experience with an alternative, religious and political arguments against the alternatives, etc.) I've been running OE on Windows for over a year now and am pretty happy with it (just remember to turn off "data execution prevention" in Windows).
Hope this helps.
Thank you, ctoman!
memory segment only 1 for this DB.
promon>R&D> 1 > 14 (Shared Memory Segments)
Seg Id Size Used Free
1 285016094 26222514176 26131626152 90888024
DB Blocksize: 8192
Number of database buffers (-B): 2000000
Number of database alternate buffers (-B2): 1000000
Thank you for your detailed response, dbeavon!
This is very interesting information for me!
Looks like Progress plans to discontinue support for HpUx in future versions...
knowledgebase.progress.com/.../OpenEdge-and-HP-UX-Itanium-support