Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard (http://www.hp.com) offers several
different server platform product lines and a proprietary operating system
called HP-UX. In addition to supporting HP-UX, the Hewlett-Packard server
platforms support other operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows Server
2003, Novell Corporation's NetWare, Red Hat Linux, and many more.
Server platforms offered by
Hewlett-Packard range from small dual-processor servers, which support either
the Intel Corporation's Xeon series processor or the AMD Opteron series
processor, to multiprocessor data center servers supporting as many as 128
processors.
The HP-UX UNIX operating system has
entered its 11th generation, offering an operating system platform for the 9000
and Integrity series servers from Hewlett-Packard, which are its elite data
center servers.
Hewlett-Packard supports all major
operating systems used today in the data center. The broad array of operating
systems adds to the complexity of selecting the correct operating system and
hardware platform to develop an optimal host server. Hewlett-Packard produces
one of the supported operating systems, HP-UX 11i. This UNIX operating system
supports application hosting, in both custom and off-the-shelf types. HP-UX,
like other UNIX operating systems, may require the administrator to take
measures to optimize not just the operating system, but also the actual compiled
code that will reside on the server.
HP-UX includes software
compilers that may require tuning or optimizations prior to touching the code
that will be compiled into executable software. Leveraging a compiler produced
by Hewlett-Packard may produce more predictable results than using a third-party
or open-source compiler. Leveraging a compiler produced by Hewlett-Packard also
allows access to Hewlett-Packard's support offerings, if problems or
incompatibilities are discovered. Ensuring that the HP-UX compiler is a current
version may also improve the performance of the compiler, providing faster
compile results.
When focusing on the HP-UX UNIX
operating system, maintaining a current patch state for the operating system
optimizes how the server's operating system operates. Applying all patches to an
operating system may not be required, but maintaining patches related to memory
paging, file system I/O, and network traffic has a direct impact on the
optimization of the server.
The HP Caliper performance
analyzer provides performance-related statistics of applications running on
HP-UX and Linux operating systems. The HP Caliper analysis tool is offered free
for HP-UX users and noncommercial Linux users. Commercial Linux users must pay a
license fee to test with this analysis tool.
Additional server optimization
resources are available on Hewlett-Packard's website. Available white papers
illustrate how to write and optimize software written in various programming
languages. Although not all programmers may work for the ultimate owner of the
application, the suggestions and free utilities provided through the
Optimization and Performance Tuning section enable application developers to
monitor system utilization when applications are written or tested.
Sections
Comments (0 posted)
Syndication
