HP's 'Odyssey' To Unify UNIX, x86 Server Architectures

HP has announced “Odyssey,” a project to redefine the future of mission-critical computing with a development roadmap that will unify UNIX and x86 server architectures to bring industry-leading availability, increased performance and uncompromising client choice to a single platform.

Organisations are challenged with increasingly stringent service-level agreements for their most demanding workloads, along with the pressure to be more efficient with their IT budgets and resources. They need the availability and resilience of UNIX-based platforms along with the familiarity and cost-efficiency of industry-standard platforms.

Using advanced technology across a common, modular HP BladeSystem architecture, HP is developing platforms to enable clients to choose the best environment aligned to their organisations’ needs without compromise, helping ensure investment protection for the long term.

HP’s new development roadmap includes ongoing innovations to HP Integrity servers, HP NonStop systems and the HP-UX and OpenVMS operating systems. The roadmap also includes delivering blades with Intel Xeon processors for the HP Superdome 2 enclosure (code name “DragonHawk”) and the scalable c-Class blade enclosures (code named “HydraLynx”), while fortifying Windows and Linux environments with innovations from HP-UX within the next two years.

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With the availability of “DragonHawk,” clients will be able to run mission-critical workloads on HP-UX on Intel Itanium-based blades while simultaneously running workloads on Microsoft Windows or Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Intel Xeon-based blades in the same Superdome 2 enclosure.

“Clients have been asking us to expand the mission-critical experience that is delivered today with HP-UX on Integrity to an x86-based infrastructure,” said Martin Fink, senior vice president and general manager, Business Critical Systems, HP. “HP plans to transform the server landscape for mission-critical computing by using the flexibility of HP BladeSystem and bringing key HP technology innovations from Integrity and HP-UX to the x86 ecosystem. Unlike the competition, HP offers an open, integrated, single platform approach.”