HP-UX is Hewlett-Packard's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating
system, based on UNIX System V and first released in 1984. Recent versions
support the HP 9000 series of computer systems, based on the PA-RISC processor
architecture, and HP Integrity systems, based on Intel's Itanium architecture.
Earlier versions of HP-UX supported the HP Integral PC and HP 9000 Series 200,
300, and 400 computer systems based on the Motorola 68000 series of processors,
as well as the HP 9000 Series 500 computers based on HP's proprietary
FOCUS processor architecture. HP-UX was the first Unix to offer access
control lists for file access permissions as an alternative to the
standard Unix permissions system. HP-UX was also among the first Unix systems to
include a built-in logical volume manager. HP has had a long partnership
with Veritas Software, and uses VxFS as the primary file system.
It is one of five commercial operating systems that have versions certified to
The Open Group's UNIX 03 standard. Characteristics
HP-UX 11i offers a common root disk for its clustered file system. HP
Serviceguard is the cluster solution for HP-UX. HP Global Workload Management
adjusts workloads to optimize performance, and integrates with Instant
Capacity on Demand so installed resources can be paid for in 30-minute
increments as needed for peak workload demands.
HP-UX offers operating system-level virtualization features such as hardware
partitions, isolated OS virtual partitions on cell-based servers, and HP
Virtual Machines on all Integrity servers. HP VMs support guests running
on HP-UX 11i v3 hosts – guests can run Linux, Windows, OpenVMS 8.4 or HP-UX. HP
supports online VM guest migration, where encryption can secure the guest
contents during migration. HP-UX 11i v3 scales as follows:
256 processor cores 8 TB main memory
32 TB maximum file system 16 TB maximum file size
100 million ZB storage Security
The 11i v2 release introduced kernel-based intrusion detection, strong
random number generation, stack buffer overflow protection, security
partitioning, role-based access management, and various open-source
security tools. Security protection on HP-UX can be
divided into three categories: Data, System and Identity:
Supported hardware platforms HP-UX operating systems supports a
variety of PA-RISC systems. The 11.0 added support for Integrity-based
servers for the transition from PA-RISC to Itanium. HP-UX 11i v1.5 is the first
version that supported Itanium. On the introduction of HP-UX 11i v2 the
operating system supported both of these architectures.
= BL series = HP-UX 11i supports HP Integrity Servers
of HP BL server blade family. These servers use the Intel Itanium
architecture. = CX series =
HP-UX 11i v2 and 11i v3 support HP's CX series servers. CX stands for carrier
grade server series, and is used mainly for telco industry with -48V DC support
and is NEBS certified. Both of these systems contain Itanium Mad6M processors
and are discontinued. = RX series =
HP-UX supports HP's RX series of servers.
Release history Prior to the release of HP-UX version
11.11, HP used a decimal version numbering scheme with the first number
giving the major release and the number following the decimal showing the minor
release. With 11.11, HP made a marketing decision to name their releases 11i
followed by a v(decimal-number) for the version. The i was intended to indicate
the OS is Internet-enabled, but the effective result was a dual
version-numbering scheme. = Versions =
1.0 Support for the HP Integral PC. Basic
kernel runs from ROM; other commands are disk based.
2.0 First release for HP 9000 Series 800.
There may have been a different 2.x version for the Series 200 at an earlier
date. 3.x
HP 9000 Series 600/800 only. Note: 2.x/3.x were developed in parallel with
5.x/6.x, so, for example, 3.x was really contemporary with 6.x. The two lines
were united at HP-UX 7.x, so that Series 800 jumped from 3.1 to 7.0 and Series
300 from 6.5 to 7.01. 5.0
Updated and renamed HP-UX 1.0 for the HP Integral PC. Supported Series 200, 300
and 500. 6.x
Support for HP 9000 Series 300 only. Introduced sockets from 4.3BSD. This
version also introduced the context dependent files feature, a method of
allowing a fileserver to serve different configurations and binaries to different
client machines in a heterogeneous environment. A directory containing such
files had its suid bit set and was made hidden from both ordinary and root
processes under normal use. Such a scheme was sometimes exploited by
hackers to hide exploits. CDFs and the CDF filesystem were dropped with release
10.0. 7.x
Support for HP 9000 Series 300/400, 600/700 /800 HP systems. Provided
OSF/Motif. 8.x
Support for HP 9000 Series 300/400 600800 systems. Shared libraries
introduced. 9.x
9.00, 9.02, 9.04, 9.01, 9.03, 9.05, 9.07, 9.08, 9.09, 9.09+, 9.10. These
provided support for the HP 9000 Series 300, 700 and 800 systems. Introduced
SAM. The Logical Volume Manager was presented in 9.00 for the Series 800 as
a replacement for the older methods of disk management. The easiest way to
determine the platform that a version of HP-UX 9.x would run on was by the last
digit. Even numbers ran on servers, odd numbers ran on workstations.
10.0 This major release saw a convergence of
the operating system between the HP 9000 Series 700 and Series 800 systems. There
was also a significant change in the layout in the system files and
directories, based on the AT&T UNIX System V Release 4 standard.
Applications were removed from /usr and moved under /opt; startup configuration
files were placed under rc.config.d; users were moved to /home from /users.
Software for HP-UX was now packaged, shipped, installed, and removed via the
Software Distributor tools. LVM was also made available for Series 700. 10.0 was
followed by 10.01, 10.02, 10.03, 10.08, 10.09, 10.10 and 10.16.
10.20 This release included support for
PA-RISC 2.0 processors that support 64-bit data registers. Pluggable
Authentication Modules were introduced for use within CDE. The root file system
could be configured to use the Veritas File System. For legacy as well as
technical reasons, the file system used for the boot kernel remained Hi
Performance FileSystem until version 11.23. 10.20 also supported 32-bit user
and group identifiers. The prior limit was 60,000, or 16-bit. This and earlier
releases of HP-UX are now effectively obsolete, and support by HP ended on
June 30, 2003. 10.24
This is a Virtual Vault release of HP-UX, providing enhanced security
features. Virtual Vault is a compartmentalised operating system in
which each file is assigned a compartment and processes only have
access to files in the appropriate compartment and unlike most other UNIX
systems the superuser does not have complete access to the system without
following correct procedures. 10.30
This was primarily a developer release with various incremental enhancements.
The use of PAM continued to expand in the system security components. Various
changes to system calls were also made. This OS also provided the first support
for Kernel Threads, with a 1:1 thread model. 10.30 was also the first release
of HP-UX that was fully year 2000 compliant.
11.00 The first HP-UX release to also support
64-bit addressing; previous releases had been 32-bit only. It could still run
32-bit applications on a 64-bit system. This release was also deemed
Y2K-compliant. It supported 1:1 kernel threads, symmetric multiprocessing,
fibre channel, and NFS PV3. It also included tools and documentation to
convert 32-bit code to 64-bit. 11.04
Virtual Vault release. 11.10
This was a limited release to support the HP 9000 V2500 SCA and V2600 SCA
servers. Other versions supported the HP 9000 V-class servers in a single cabinet
configuration, 11.10 ran on the SCA versions where two servers are stacked
on top of each other, interconnected by a hyperplane crossbar. 11.10 also added
JFS 3.3, 128-CPU support, AutoFS, and a new ftpd. It was not available
separately. 11.11
Also known as 11i, this release of HP-UX introduced the concept of Operating
Environments. It was released in December 2000. These are bundled groups
of layered applications intended for use with a general category of usage. The
available types were the Mission Critical, Enterprise, Internet,
Technical Computing, and Minimal Technical OEs. The main enhancements
with this release were support for hard partitions, gigabit ethernet, NFS over
TCP/IP, loadable kernel modules, dynamic kernel tunable parameters, kernel event
Notifications, and protected stacks. 11.20
Also known as 11i v1.5, this release of HP-UX was the first to support the new
line of Itanium-based systems. It was not intended for mission critical
computing environments and did not support HP's ServiceGuard cluster
software. It did provide support for running PA-RISC compiled applications on
Itanium systems, and for Veritas Volume Manager 3.1.
11.22 An incremental release of the Itanium
version of HP-UX, it was designated 11i v1.6. This version achieved 64-way
scalability, m:n threads, added more dynamic kernel tunable parameters, and
supported HP's Logical Volume Manager on Itanium. It was built from the 11i v1
source code stream. 11.23
The original release of this version was in September 2003 to support the
Itanium-based systems. This version is also identified as 11i v2. In September
2004 the OS was updated to provide support for both Itanium and PA-RISC
systems. Besides running on Itanium systems, this release includes support
for ccNUMA, web-based kernel and device configuration, IPv6 and a strong random
number generator. 11.31
This release is also identified as HP-UX 11i v3. This release supports both
PA-RISC and Itanium. It was released on February 15, 2007. Major new features
include native multipathing support, a unified file cache, NFS v4, Veritas
ClusterFS, multi-volume VxFS, and integrated virtualization.
Hyperthreading is supported on Itanium systems with Montecito and Tukwila
processors. HP-UX 11i v3 conforms to The Open Group's UNIX 03 standard. Updates
for 11iv3 have been released every 6 months, with the latest being Update 14,
released in March 2015. HP has moved to a cadence of one major HP-UX operating
system update per year. = 11i v3 Updates =
Update 14 New features/products – Java 8.0.00 and
10GigEthr-05 HP-UX 11i operating environments
HP bundles HP-UX 11i with programs in packages they call Operating
Environments. The following lists the currently
available HP-UX 11i v3 OEs: HP-UX 11i v3 Base OE
Includes the full HP-UX 11i operating system plus file system and partitioning
software and applications for Web serving, system management and security.
BOE includes all the software formerly in FOE & TCOE, plus software formerly
sold stand-alone. HP-UX 11i v3 Virtualization Server OE
Includes everything in BOE plus GlancePlus performance analysis and
software mirroring, and all Virtual Server Environment software which
includes virtual partitions, virtual machines, workload management, capacity
advisor and applications. VSE-OE includes all the software formerly in
EOE, plus additional virtualization software.
HP-UX 11i v3 High Availability OE Includes everything in BOE plus HP
Serviceguard clustering software for system failover and tools to manage
clusters, as well as GlancePlus performance analysis and software
mirroring applications. HP-UX 11i v3 Data Center OE
Includes everything in one package, combining the HP-UX 11i operating system
with virtualization. Everything in the HA-OE and VSE-OE is in the DC-OE.
Solutions for wide-area disaster recovery and the compiler bundle are
sold separately. HP-UX 11i v2
HP dropped support for v2 in December 2010. Currently available HP-UX 11i v2
OEs include: HP-UX 11i v2 Foundation OE
Designed for Web servers, content servers and front-end servers, this OE
includes applications such as HP-UX Web Server Suite, Java, and Mozilla
Application Suite. This OE is bundled as HP-UX 11i FOE.
HP-UX 11i v2 Enterprise OE Designed for database application
servers and logic servers, this OE contains the HP-UX 11i v2 Foundation OE
bundles and additional applications such as GlancePlus Pak to enable an
enterprise-level server. This OE is bundled as HP-UX 11i EOE.
HP-UX 11i v2 Mission Critical OE Designed for the large, powerful
back-end application servers and database servers that access customer
files and handle transaction processing, this OE contains the Enterprise OE
bundles, plus applications such as MC/ServiceGuard and Workload Manager to
enable a mission-critical server. This OE is bundled as HP-UX 11i MCOE.
HP-UX 11i v2 Minimal Technical OE Designed for workstations running HP-UX
11i v2, this OE includes the Mozilla Application Suite, Perl, VxVM, and Judy
applications, plus the OpenGL Graphics Developer's Kit. This OE is bundled as
HP-UX 11i MTOE. HP-UX 11i v2 Technical Computing OE
Designed for both compute-intensive workstation and server applications,
this OE contains the MTOE bundles plus extensive graphics applications, MPI and
Math Libraries. This OE is bundled as HP-UX 11i-TCOE.
HP-UX 11i v1 According to HP's roadmap, was sold
through December 2009, with continued support for v1 at least until December
2015. = See also =
HP-UX Process Resource Manager software References
External links HP-Journal oct. 1985 introducing the HP
Integral and HP-UX 1.0 HP-UX & HP Integrity Official Blog
Mission Critical Musings HP-UX Guides Blog
Hewlett-Packard HP-UX The HP-UX Porting and Archive Center:
Porting Open-source software to HP-UX HP-UX FAQ
Securing HP-UX HP and Veritas to Accelerate HP-UX 11i
Virtualization New HP-UX 11i v3 Operating Environments
11i v3 Update 2, a name that's practically poetry
HPUX Quick Notes and Guides HP-UX man pages and shell accounts
provided by Polarhome