IA-64 server emulation · 0.1.0 beta

Your HP-UX servers, on hardware you can still buy

Gavial emulates an Itanium server in software. HP-UX 11i v2 and v3 run on it unmodified, with their applications and data, as ordinary managed services on standard x86-64 Linux servers.

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Genuinely Accurate Virtual IA-64 Layer

HP-UX 11.23 and 11.31unmodified guests

No source changesoriginal media or disk images

RHEL 10 hostssigned .rpm packages

AMD EPYCrecommended host CPU

How it works

Three layers, and only the bottom one is new

Gavial sits between your Itanium software and a modern Linux server. It presents the guest with the hardware HP-UX expects, using devices HP-UX already has drivers for, so nothing above it needs to change.

The guest cannot tell the differenceIt boots through emulated EFI firmware and sees an Itanium server with a SCSI controller and Gigabit Ethernet of models its drivers already support.
Each guest is an ordinary Linux serviceA systemd unit in its own unprivileged container, monitored and restarted like anything else on the host.
Your Linux team runs the hardwarePatching, monitoring and backups of the host use the tools you already use for RHEL.

Your guest

unchanged

The operating system, applications and data you run today.

HP-UX 11.31
HP-UX 11.23
Linux ia64
OpenVMS I64

Gavial

emulated Itanium server

An Itanium 2 CPU, firmware and the devices HP-UX already supports.

IA-64 CPU
EFI
SCSI controller
Gigabit Ethernet

Linux host

standard x86-64 server

Current, supportable hardware and a supported operating system.

RHEL 10
AVX2
systemd
AMD EPYC

Features

What a Gavial guest gets

Operating systems

HP-UX 11i v2 (11.23) and 11i v3 (11.31), unmodified
Linux for Itanium (Debian 7 tested)
OpenVMS I64 V8.4 as a preview

Storage

Emulated SCSI controller of a model widely supported by guest operating systems
Up to eight disks per guest, each up to 2 TB
Snapshots, rollbacks and clones in seconds

Networking

Up to four Gigabit Ethernet adapters per guest, bridged onto your LAN
Untagged, single-VLAN access, or a trunk of up to 64 tagged VLANs per adapter
Guests appear on the network like physical servers

Licensing and updates

Signed .rpm packages for RHEL 10
Subscription token, no license server to run
Upgrades without stopping running guests

Migration

Three ways to bring a server across

Pick whichever matches what you have. Disks and DVD images import from files, block devices or over ssh.

HP-UX install DVD

Install from original media

Build a clean guest from your HP-UX installation DVDs, then restore applications and data as you would on new hardware.

disk image

Start from a disk image

Gavial boots raw disk images, so a guest can start from a copy of an existing disk instead of a fresh install. Export and import move a guest between hosts as one compressed archive.

Beta Ignite-UX recovery tape

Recover from an Ignite-UX archive

Use the recovery tape you already make of a running HP-UX server with Ignite-UX to recreate it as a guest. Tested with HP-UX 11.23, including a tape from a physical rx2620; 11.31 restores are still being tested.

Operations

One command for every guest operation

Operators manage guests with gctl, without root access to the host. Start, stop, snapshot and move guests the same way on every server.

Snapshots before patches, with rollback in seconds
Clones for test and training copies of production
Offline migration of a guest between hosts

gavial host · examplegctl

$ gctl list
NAME        STATE     OS              NICS
erp-prod    running   HP-UX 11.31     2
billing     running   HP-UX 11.23     1
test-1131   stopped   HP-UX 11.31     1
$ gctl snapshot test-1131 before-patch
$ gctl migrate test-1131 ops@host-b

Recommended host

Choose fast cores over many cores

Emulation speed depends mostly on single-core performance. We recommend AMD EPYC Zen 3 or newer, or Intel Xeon with Golden Cove cores or newer, running at 4 GHz or more. A high-clock part is a better choice than one with the most cores.

For sizing, plan about one host core per busy guest, and the guest's memory plus about 2 GB. An idle HP-UX guest still keeps one core busy. Keep guests on XFS with reflink, or on btrfs, so snapshots and clones are near-instant. The 0.1.0 beta runs single-CPU guests; multi-CPU guests are planned for 1.0.0.

Example server: HPE ProLiant DL385 Gen10 Plus v2
Processors: 1 or 2 × AMD EPYC 74F3
Operating system: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10
CPU requirement: x86-64-v3 (AVX2), 4 GHz or more recommended
Sizing: about 1 host core per guest, guest memory + 2 GB
Guest storage: XFS with reflink, or btrfs

Status

What the beta does today, and what comes next

In the 0.1.0 beta

Single-CPU guestsbeta
x86-64 hosts with AVX2, RHEL 10beta
HP-UX 11.23 and 11.31, Debian 7 (ia64)beta
Ignite-UX recovery import (HP-UX 11.23 tested)beta
OpenVMS I64preview

Planned

HP-UX guest agent for communication between guest and host0.1.0
Multi-CPU guests1.0.0
Failover between two hosts on shared storage1.0.0
Packages for 64-bit ARM hostst.b.a.
Live migration between identical hostst.b.a.

Evaluate

Try Gavial on one of your own HP-UX systems

Beta evaluations are open to organizations with HP-UX on Integrity servers, and to hardware and software partners. Tell us which HP-UX versions and applications you run, and we will set up an evaluation with you.

support@kestosystems.com