HP 3000 managers will be planning for another end-of-year change during the next month or so, as the thousands of sites running MPE/iX 5.5 make the transition to a supported operating system. This year’s holiday celebration plans shouldn’t take a hit like last year’s Y2K changeover, however.

The Commercial Systems Division (CSY) e3000 group has announced that official HP support ends for all 5.5 releases on December 31. Thousands of systems run on 5.5, so that end of support is prompting a transition to another operating release. For many customers, stepping up to 6.5 is too big a leap from 5.5, due to performance concerns and a loss of peripheral support for HP-IB devices. Others have no choice, since their application providers are already shifting to 6.5 and won’t support 6.0.

The 6.5 release has engineering to recommend it, benefits that come from revision of its Transaction Manager and multiple run queues to relieve bottlenecks in multiprocessing HP 3000s. But HP has also confirmed that 6.5 isn’t for everyone. In fact, the division’s architect for performance said 6.5 is best fit for large sites that need lots of performance help, consolidation projects, and those that need the new Internet features of 6.5.

“I really don’t think we’re going to have a lot of issues if people go to 6.5,” said Kevin Cooper of CSY’s lab. “In other cases, there may be other considerations, like when they’re going to upgrade again. 6.5 will last longer.

“The reason we extended 6.0 was for the 9x7 platform,” Cooper said. “If those people don’t even plan to do anything else, then they can use 6.0 as the end of the line. But I would hope there would a lot of customers who think they’re going to do something else: add users, new applications, do Internet stuff. Then they’d want to think about 6.5, and what their next hardware upgrade is going to be.”

Cooper said that accessing MPE fixed-length flat files, through FREADs and FWRITEs, will cost more in performance than it did in the 5.5 or 6.0 releases. It’s a cost that’s related to HP’s decision to provide access to files greater than 4Gb in size for nearly all of its 3000 installed base, instead of just those systems running with 64-bit PA-RISC processors.

“We implemented it for everyone, and did not fork the OS,” Cooper said. “Everybody gets it when you go to 6.5 or any future release.” Customer and software vendors argued for this “no-fork” design choice several years ago at the Interex IPROF conference. “It does have an increased cost in terms of reading and writing to flat files,” he said.

Cooper added that “almost everyone is using flat files. But if it’s only one percent of what you do, and it now costs 10 percent more [in performance], you’re simply not going to notice that.”

Most applications make much more extensive use of IMAGE files, he added, and the performance hit for 6.5 doesn’t apply to these database files. “HP implemented a new file type, KSAM64, in the release, so if someone chooses to use those files, they’re asking to be able to have a large KSAM file on their system, and so there is going to be additional overhead for the key structure,” Cooper said.

Cooper’s talk at HP World on the 6.5 performance considerations outlined the target audience for the new release. It’s a good fit for sites which are consolidating HP 3000s to a single system; those that are reaching the performance and capacity limits of Series 997/800 systems; and those that have high-end Amisys application needs. “It runs really well on the 997 10- and 12-way systems,” Cooper said of the healthcare application under 6.5.

There are some new general use features only available using the 6.5 release, such as the secure Web server for the HP 3000, or greater-than-4 Gb file sizes, or large memory capacities above 3.75Gb. These memory capacities aren’t supported on many HP 3000 models, only those that use the PA-8000 and 8200 64-bit processors.

One 6.5 drawback

Going to the latest release does deliver some unmitigated drawbacks from some customers’ perspectives. The SYSDIAG tool that was used for diagnosis of system failures has been replaced by a new tool from the HP Unix world, STM. Early reports on STM find fault with its interface — too much command-line entry required, in the style of the worst of Unix. It’s also unable to work if a 3000’s network is down, unlike SYSDIAG.

SYSDIAG was a password-protected tool that HP used and that its customers of 3000s learned to rely upon. Replacing it with STM was a political move that MPE lost, according to some observers. HP always tried to have a single set of diagnostics that would run on both platforms. For years, it was SYSDIAG which ran on both MPE/iX and HP-UX. SYSDIAG was driven by the MPE group.

When HP decided to move to a new set of diagnostics, this time HP-UX was doing the driving. HP’s documentation notes that “With MPE/iX 6.5, the Support Tools Manager (STM) replaced the SYSDIAG online diagnostic system on HP 3000 computer systems. SYSDIAG, known internally as ‘Sherlock,’ has been the online diagnostic system for HP 3000 systems for more than 13 years.” Sherlock also served HP-UX needs during that time.

HP says that STM is a common platform which “reduces the cost to support new systems and peripherals, and make it possible to bring new tools to MPE/iX 6.5 and beyond. STM will not be provided on any previous MPE/iX release.”

While testing for a disk drive that might be having problems, for example, STM reports that its verify function is “currently disabled.” One experienced engineer with background on both operating systems said that “STM is lousy on HP-UX, and isn’t even that good on MPE/iX.”

Customer upgrade plans

The 3000 NewsWire surveyed its readers to learn their plans on upgrading from their 5.5 releases, and found overwhelming support for making the smallest possible move to the 6.0 release. Some sites simply have to follow their application provider. Smith-Gardner is telling customers that by June of 2001, all of its sites will need to be on the 6.5 release of MPE/iX, because S-G is moving its own development and support systems there — and can’t compile code back into 6.0-compatible versions once it moves.

“It is vital that you upgrade your systems to MPE/iX 6.5 before June 1, 2001,” S-G stated in a memo to its customers, “since code compiled on MPE/iX 6.5 is not compatible with previous versions of the operating system. Once we upgrade our development systems to MPE/iX 6.5, we will no longer be able to send code to a client who is on a previous version of the operating system.”

Other application providers are already pushing their customers onto 6.5, most notably the Amisys Payor Solutions Group of HBOC. HP tuned 6.5 to help very large Amisys sites get performance improvements, and HBOC isn’t supporting 6.0 at all.

But for the majority of 3000 customers, who run their home-grown applications, the choice to move to 6.0 or 6.5 is theirs to make over the next few weeks. Some who have already approached the project offered these comments:

Harlan Lassiter of Boyle Engineering had comments typical of many: HP-IB peripherals would keep him on 6.0. He said at his medium sized engineering firm, “we have legacy software written in house over the last 25 years. Right now we are running 5.5 PP7 and I plan to go just to 6.0 PP2. Although we have purchased and are now using the LPQ1000 network printer, we still have an old 2564B printer and a 9-track tape drive on the HP-IB interface. After upgrading to 6.0, I will begin the process of eliminating the HP-IB device and converting the tape to SCSI.”

Alan Chalmers of Genlyte Thomas said he’s taking his systems to 6.0 PowerPatch 2. “I figured that with all the postings about 6.5 concerns, I’d better be conservative,” he said. “Besides, I don’t see anything in 6.5 that would help me.”

Other sites say the Internet benefits of 6.5 provide a lure, but concerns over performance need to be addressed in testing.

At the City of Santa Cruz, IT operations administrator Phillip Rupp says “I’m worried about the possible slowdown. We only have 512Mb memory on our 959 box for 60 users, so I plan on doing some testing at our backup site first. If it is an issue, I will probably move to 6.0 first and save 6.5 for later. The real benefit for the upgrade for us would be the Web server and Internet enhancements. I looking forward to using some of this new technology for an intranet.”

Other customers are taking the plunge slowly to 6.5. Fred Cook of Medical Pathways said that “we just updated to 6.5 PowerPatch 1 on our 918LX. We also put on MPEXLB0 (the unfix from 6.5’s PowerPatch 1 that brought Suprtool /Sort to a crawl). Our 959-400 production machine is on 6.0 PowerPatch 2, but we will be going to 6.5 once we’re convinced it is okay.”

Ted Ashton of Southern Adventist University will be migrating to 6.0. “We’re a small shop with one tiny 947 in production,” he said. “As 6.5 is being touted as a performance release and the changes don’t improve performance on the low end — perhaps even hurt it — we’re going to wait until 7.0 before we take the hit.”

“I have no immediate plans to go to 6.5,” said T. Keith Roberston of ComSonics, “since from what I’ve read, it’s of no real benefit to me. I am glad HP extended support for 6.0 through April 2002, so I can wait for 6.5 to become more stable. Version 6.0 works for now, and as long as none of my software providers force me to upgrade, I’ll stay put for now.”

Those making the bigger shift to 6.5 have reported some minor issues, but no show-stoppers. Some are waiting for the 6.5 PowerPatch 2 to be released, sometime in November. “Since our production systems are large,” said one system manager, “I don’t want to have any of the surprises that some of the large Amisys customers described during HP World.”

Some Amisys sites are reporting issues with 6.5 installation. Steve Pittenger of Geisinger Health Systems went to 6.5 on his Series 928 test system using a custom CSLT tape and custom patch tape provided through his HP PSS support service.