HP e3000 faqs

HP and HP partners provide a broad range of migration and consulting services to help customers transition successfully. These include help with analyzing and managing your current HP e3000 environment, migrating software and even managing your new environment after the transition is over.

• In order to allow our customers to effectively manage their business through the transition, HP will continue to provide a comprehensive portfolio of support services for the HP e3000 until December 31, 2010.
• Assessment and Planning Services: HP and its partners can provide customers with tools and assistance in analysis and inventory of the existing HP e3000 environment, including application analysis, storage, networking, etc.
• Migration and porting tools and services: HP and its partners can provide customers with tools and assistance in transitioning from the HP e3000 platform to another HP platform.
• Testing and Deployment: HP and its partners can provide customers with help in testing and deploying new applications for HP servers, including parallel testing with the HP e3000 environment. We can also work with you on outsourcing the management of your old HP e3000 environment, as well as your new environment.
• HP Education: HP Education has a complete curriculum of courses to help you learn how to port applications from MPE/iX to other platforms.
• HP and its partners can provide customers with Itanium®, PA-RISC, and Intel-based server technologies on platforms (such as HP-UX, Linux and various Microsoft operating systems) that are similar to, but are far more current than, the technologies that they've been using on MPE/iX. This will provide value to customers by smoothing their migration away from the HP e3000, and reducing the learning curve associated with the new platform.

What is the System Inventory Utility?

It is a tool that can run interactively on the customer's HP e3000 system and will pull as much information off the system as possible. This information can be used in understanding your basic HP e3000 system environment.

Will the System Inventory Utility do an in-depth analysis of my HP e3000 environment?

No. The System Inventory Tool will give you a "basic" understanding of what you have in your HP e3000 environment. This will help you to get started in your planning.

We run our company on the HP e3000. What is HP's advice for us?

You should be planning to migrate your application environment to another HP platform. You can continue to use the HP e3000 in a safe and stable way because HP will be offering a broad portfolio of support services until December 31, 2010.

HP and its partners have services and tools available which can make it cost-effective to replace existing HP applications or to migrate homegrown applications to other HP platforms.

We're using a "home grown" application. What should we be planning to do?

HP is offering a broad range of transition services to help customers move their homegrown applications to their new HP environment.

The "HP e3000 Transition Considerations" white paper provides detailed information on our many programs to help you move to your future environment.

When I'm ready to "switch over" HP e3000 applications to HP-UX, can my new HP e3000 A-Class or N-Class be converted into an HP-UX (HP 9000) server?

Yes. No charge hardware conversion kits enable you to convert HP e3000 A-Class and N-Class server hardware to an equivalent HP-UX server hardware. The kit includes necessary conversion hardware. The HP-UX 11i Operating Environment License-To-Use and media kit must be ordered separately; the HP-UX 11i Base OE LTU is available at no charge. The conversion kit includes HP installation.

HP has designed a comprehensive training curriculum specifically for HP e3000 customers. This program includes a white paper, transition aids, webcasts (live and replay), web-based course work, and in-depth classroom courses. Visit the training and education site for the latest information.

Will training discounts be offered? Education and training discounts for HP e3000 customers vary by country. Please contact your local sales representative for the latest discounts available.

HP will continue to support MPE/iX 7.x and 6.5 releases until the end of December 2010. The HP e3000 A-Class and N-Class hardware as well as most of our other HP e3000 systems will also be supported until the end of December 2010. Please visit the end of support web site for latest details.

What if I'm using an older Series 9xx model?

If you're using an earlier version of MPE/iX, or a model of the HP e3000 that pre-dates the A-class and N-class platforms, such as a Series 9x7, please check the HP e3000 end of support web site which contains the end-of-support dates for all the HP e3000 models supported as of November 2001. HP has extended many end-of-support dates to December 2010 to ease customers' migration efforts.

What about software support for MPE/iX?

Support for version 7.x releases of MPE/iX will continue until December 31, 2010.

Software support for MPE/iX Release 6.5 has been extended until December 31, 2010. Support for some earlier models of the HP e3000, such as the 9x7, as well as some earlier versions of MPE/iX (such as 5.5) is ending earlier than 2006, as was previously announced by HP.

Will HP continue to provide mission critical support services on HP e3000s? Yes, HP will continue to provide you with a comprehensive portfolio of support services, including mission critical support services, until the end of December 2008.

Why does the support life for some of HP e3000 systems end earlier than end of December 2008?

Some of the HP e3000 models have been around for a long period of time. For all of these older products, a notification was sent to our customers regarding the end of support life. HP has re-examined the end of support life for all currently supported models of HP e3000, extending support life for majority of them to December 2010.

We still have a Series 9x7 server. Why couldn't HP extend the 9X7 support life, as it did for the other HP e3000 products?

The 9x7 products were first sold in June 1991, many hardware generations ago. Although we've re-examined the 9x7 parts availability, the age and limited supply of 9x7 parts have made it such that HP is not able to extend that platform's hardware support life.

I do not have support on my HP e3000 platform today. Can I still purchase support services from HP?

Yes. It is not too late to purchase support for your current HP e3000 environment. HP offers a portfolio of support services until December 31, 2010. HP has extended end-of-support dates for most HP e3000 systems to December 2010 to ease customers' migration efforts.

Please check the "HP e3000 Support Matrix" document, which contains the end-of-support dates for all HP e3000 models supported as of November 2001.

How long is HP going to provide me with parts for my HP e3000 systems?

HP will provide parts until the end of support life for your HP e3000 systems. We have extended the end of support life for majority of currently supported models of HP e3000 to allow more time for planning and execution of your transition.

How will I know about the end of support dates for my systems?

The "HP e3000 Support Matrix" document contains the end of support dates for all HP e3000 models supported as of November 2001.

Similar to previous end of support practices, contract customers will be informed through contract renewal processes, 12 months before the end of support date.

HP's support organization has the obligation to make sure sufficient parts, software patches and support resources are available through the promised support period.

Most of the HP e3000's Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) already have similar products that run on other HP platforms, or have already ported their e3000 applications to HP ProLiant or HP 9000 servers. To learn more about your HP e3000 ISV's plans for the future, contact your ISV directly or visit the HP e3000 Transition Partner web site.

What services are available from HP Partners? In addition to the HP transition offerings, many non-HP services and tools are available, and more are being currently developed. A robust and active Channel Partner community has always supported the HP e3000, and many of them also have tools available on other HP platforms.

To assist your transition to another HP platform, this skilled Channel Partner community is ready to help by offering tools and services to focus on many aspects of your transition, such as GUI/front end tools, JCL, intrinsics, and MPE utilities, database ETL (extraction, transformation, and loading), languages, multi-platform IMAGE, ODBC, and database wrappers, and migration services. Visit the HP e3000 Transition Partner web site for the latest information.

If I want HP to help me figure out what to do next, whom do I contact?

HP's Consulting organization is ready to help HP e3000 customers who need assistance planning. Contact your local HP sales representative or HP authorized reseller for help with this.

Can HP help me move my existing application to another platform?

HP has a full suite of porting and migration services available for our HP e3000 customers. Starting with an analysis of your current situation, HP can help you with everything you need to get your application into production on HP 9000 (running HP-UX) or another HP platform.

How much do HP's migration services cost?

Since the size and complexity of HP e3000 customer applications vary greatly, HP will give you an estimated price at the conclusion of our initial study.

HP's prices are very competitive in the industry for these services.

The HP e3000 A- and N-Class servers will be supported on MPE/iX 7.5 only. There are no plans to support PA-8700 systems on MPE/iX 7.0.

Which specific e3000 platforms is MPE/iX Release 7.5 certified on?

MPE/iX Release 7.5 runs on the entire line of HP e3000 server platforms currently supported by HP; from the PA-8700 PA-RISC processors running on HP e3000 A- and N-Class servers, through the supported series 900 systems, which include the 9x8, 9x9KS, 99x.

What is the support plan for MPE/iX Release 7.5? The 7.5 release will be supported thru December 2010.

I've heard that there are some new High End limit increases, can you tell us about those?

At present 1140 user processes are allowed access per User logging process. For 7.5 we have increased this limit to more than double, up to 2851 user processes.

We have also increased large data set limits. When Turbo Image was introduced, the size of a dataset was limited to 4GB which was the limit until recently. When users demanded a larger data set, JUMBO data set was introduced, which can have a maximum size of 396GB.

Yes.

How is Fibre Channel connectivity achieved on MPE/iX release 7.5?

With MPE/iX Release 7.5, support has been introduced for new Fibre Channel Device Adapter cards on the A- and N-Class HP e3000 systems. These PCI-bus based adapter cards provide the ability to connect a Fibre Channel device directly to the HP e3000 system using Fibre channel cables.

Prior to this release, the e3000 supported connectivity to fibre channel devices only through a SCSI-Fibre Channel Router connected on a PCI-SCSI HVD card or NIO SCSI card. As this provided an important connection to Fibre devices, it also introduced added complexity as well as multiple points of failure in the system.

Additionally, accessing FC devices through the router and SCSI cable brings down the high Fibre Channel transfer rates ultimately to lower SCSI transfer rates. Now with the support for Fibre Channel (FC) adapter cards, the router is no longer needed for these A- and N-Class systems.

What benefits can customers gain by moving to native Fibre Channel?

This introduction of support for FC device adapter cards brings numerous benefits to e3000 customers, some of which would be:

• Simplified connectivity to fibre channel devices
• Improved fibre channel I/O performance
• Reduced maintenance issues and cost
• Ability to access the entire range of fibre channel devices
• Lower cost of ownership

Are there any devices not supported on Native Fibre Channel, MPE/iX 7.5?

At the present time, no tape devices are supported on Fibre channel adapter cards. And since the adapter card is PCI-bus based, it can be supported only on A and N-Class HP e3000 systems. There is no support for Fibre Channel Device Adapter cards on the NIO-bus based e3000's like the 99x or 9x9 systems. These systems would continue to use the SCSI-Fibre router for connecting to fibre devices.