Express 1 gives N-Class full power

HP ships first multi-processor PCI systems with latest 7.0 push

HP will be pushing out its Express 1 release of MPE/iX 7.0 to most of the HP customer base this month. The software delivers an extended range of power for the N-Class systems first introduced this spring through its multi-processor support, as well as adding a twin-processor option for the entry-level A-Class line.

The new operating system also enables higher memory limits on the new N-Class and A-Class HP e3000s. HP held back such capabilities, including the multi-processor support, in the first wave of new system shipments this year. The earliest shipments — largely N-Class servers — arrived at customer sites with a free LAN card, since the base release of MPE/iX 7.0 also didn’t support the core IO card built into the new systems. “We will be supporting the LAN functionality on the IO card with Express 1,” HP Platform Planning engineer Dave Snow said in a briefing at the HP World conference in Chicago.

But the Express release does more than enable new hardware such as the IO subsystem cards or the faster multiple processors. According to CSY Internet and Interoperability engineer Alvina Nishimoto, a key goal of Express 1 is to give the newest systems a MPE/iX version with all the features and capacities of 6.5, such as 511 spindles of disk devices.

“The whole purpose of the release is to make sure we’ve got the remaining things that weren’t [in 7.0] from 6.5 Express 2,” Nishimoto said. “It looks good with the multi-processors. Performance is good, and it’s meeting our expectations. It’s just a matter of going through the testing cycle.”

At the HP World conference, Nishimoto said beta testing was well underway on the Express 1 software, which will be sent to all customers with current support contracts for HP 3000s which can use 7.0. HP hasn’t changed its plan to end support for all 9x7 systems in April, she added; managers at those sites won’t be receiving the Express 1 push shipment.

The software is already in full test at three sites which are running multiple-processor versions of e3000s, Nishimoto said. It enables 16Gb memory capacity support for all N-Class systems, and 8Gb of memory on the A500 boxes; both were limited to 2Gb in their spring rollouts. 7.0 Express 1 also supports files greater than 4Gb. Advanced Telnet capabilities aren’t scheduled to be included in the Express 1 release.

The Express 1 release will include an updated version of Samba/iX, however. The printer and file sharing tool which turns the e3000 into a Windows print and file server comes in a 2.0.7 version bundled with Express 1. This Samba version has user-selectable name resolution order, improved share mode handling, western European language support, and works with additional MPE filename characters.

A-Class power questioned

The release of 7.0 Express 1 won’t deliver one improvement hoped for by some customers — an increase in the A-Class e3000 processing power. Rumors have been circulating in the e3000 community that the operating system is throttling down the processing power in the A-Class, speculation that HP has not confirmed or denied.

HP’s Snow pointed out the difference between the e3000 A-Class line and its HP 9000 counterpart after taking a question about when the e3000s would step up to the same 440 MHz clock speed.

“We just shipped these things, and now people want higher frequencies,” Snow said. “At this time we’re not supporting the 440- and 550-MHz versions of the 8500 [processors]. We expect as we raise the frequency supported on the N-Class servers next year, we’ll be providing higher frequency versions of the A-Class servers at the same time.”

A-Class servers also don’t support HP’s Multifunction IO cards, interfaces which “provide multiple spigots coming off of them.” The A-Class doesn’t have Fibre Channel support in its future, unlike the N-Class servers, which HP said are expected to get it late next year.

Christine Martino, worldwide marketing manager for the e3000 division (CSY), said the division was looking at the overall value in the 3000 when limiting the performance of its entry-level systems. It’s not a fair comparison between 3000 and 9000 server families, she explained.

“We designed the product structure of the A- and N-Class to hit very specific price-performance points to address a worldwide market,” Martino said. “I think it’s a bit unfair to compare us directly to an A-Class on the 9000 for several reasons — the most important of which is the value is based on MPE.”

Martino said since HP bundles the IMAGE/SQL database and unlimited user licenses for the new systems, “It’s absolutely not an apples-to-apples comparison. While there might be things some folks don’t like, we attempted to address customer concerns, take a lot of customer feedback, and hit price performance points that would meet our worldwide market needs.” (See our story with early comments from our own customer survey about A-Class and N-Class satisfaction.)

Some customers who are keen for a lower price point to match the A-Class systems’ lower performance levels have suggested HP offer an A-Class option without IMAGE — something HP has been loath to do, after customers protested about a plan to un-bundle the database from the 3000 a decade ago.

“One of the focuses of the A-Class was as an Internet machine,” explained Ken Paul, moderator at the e3000 Management Roundtable at HP World. “People are saying ‘If it’s an Internet box, why does it come with IMAGE?’”

HP’s Snow said, “We’re still thinking about that, but we don’t want to do that at this time. We’ll continue to consider that as a possibility in the future. Over 80 percent of the customers purchasing our servers are asking for IMAGE.”