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HP's HP9000 A--Class A180C Enterprise Server


June 1999

HP's HP9000 A-Class A180C Enterprise Server

Designed as a low-cost, high-density Web server, is the A-Class as mean as it is lean?

Ralph Barker

One might think it was the Middle Ages, considering the efforts system manufacturers are expending to put their machines on the rack. Most vendors have rackmount versions of their servers available, and several companies, including Hewlett Packard and Sun, have recently introduced new rackmounted products.

Although small businesses prefer deskside tower configurations that can be integrated into their office décor, data centers and ISPs are keen on racks, which compress more computing power into a smaller footprint--solid logic for better use of prime data-center real estate.

 

HP9000 A-Class A180C

This month's Reviews / Hardware / examines one of the entries in the rackmounted-systems field, Hewlett Packard's new HP9000 A-Class enterprise server. The A-Class is based on HP's 180MHz PA-RISC 7300LC processor, is a mere two rack units (3½ inches) in height, and is aimed at the high compute-density requirements of ISPs and data centers for Internet-related services. The vertical compactness of the A-Class lets you install as many as 20 systems into a standard two-meter rack.

Of Note

Most recent non-Intel servers have 64-bit CPUs, but the core of the A-Class is HP's PA-7300, a 32-bit processor. This may seem a bit retro, but there is little about Internet services that actually benefits from 64-bit processing. Thus, designing the A-Class around a 32-bit CPU that is economical to produce (by RISC standards) is consistent with HP's objective of high compute density for the system. Additionally, you may recall from our review of HP's B-Class workstation (UNIX Review, February 1997), the PA-7300 is a comparatively snappy performer for a 32-bit CPU.

One of the more interesting design features of the A-Class is its integration of HP's Secure Web Console (SWC). Also available as a standalone device, the SWC circuitry includes an Ethernet port separate from that of the main system board, and a firmware-embedded Web server that connects to the main system's console port. While the standalone unit physically connects to the console port via an RS-232 cable, the A-Class integration of SWC provides that connection internally.

If the system detects a link pulse on the SWC Ethernet port during startup, the main system's console port is switched internally to the SWC, and the external RS-232 port is disabled. Thus, the SWC gives you a browser-based management interface to the system that is consistent with the traditional status of the console port. The SWC's Ethernet port can be connected to the primary LAN, or can be maintained on a separate systems-management subnet. If the SWCs are kept on a subnet, for example, remote-management access to the systems can be had through a route that is separate from that used by conventional users, thus providing greater security. In either case, the SWC gives you full console-level access to the system across the network, and lets the SWC-connected administrator perform all tasks that otherwise would be performed from a directly connected ASCII console terminal.

Operation

The only printed documentation that ships with the A-Class is a small booklet showing basic cable connections and outlining the customary safety and regulatory statements. All other documentation is either part of the installed HP-UX OS (for example, online manual pages, CDE-based help facilities, and files in /usr/share/doc) or accessed via the Web. Web-accessible documentation includes installation guides at the product marketing site (http://eproducts.hp.com/A-Class/frame_service.html) and a combination of hardware and software documentation at the HP documentation site, http://docs.hp.com. Additionally, the HP Instant Information CD-ROM, a collection of online documentation, is available as a $300 option.

Thus, to install and configure the A-Class, it is cumbersome (though necessary) to have another system on hand to access the various documentation Web sites. Following the hierarchy of product information from the main HP site, you will see a "Support and Documentation" listing on the A-Class product page. Clicking on that link takes you to the product marketing URL listed previously. Make sure you have Java and JavaScript enabled in your browser, as the HP online documentation makes use of these features.

As noted earlier, the A-Class rear panel has two RJ-45 Ethernet connectors--one for the primary system's Ethernet connection, and a second port for the Secure Web Console. The SWC Ethernet port can be connected to a management subnet, or directly to an Ethernet port in a laptop computer or workstation (using the appropriate crossover cable) for the initial configuration. The IP address of the SWC Ethernet port defaults to 192.0.0.192, and the embedded Web server in the SWC boots automatically upon system power-up. To make the connection using a

Inside The A-Class

crossover cable, add a route that maps the SWC IP address to that of your laptop's Ethernet port, start the local browser, then point the browser to the SWC's default address. From there, you can configure the SWC's permanent IP address, set up your administrative login IDs, and so forth. This configuration data is stored in NVRAM on the SWC board, and is accessible only via the Web on whatever network the SWC Ethernet port connects to, but not from the main system itself.

To configure the underlying system, you can use either the console window within the SWC or a regular ASCII terminal attached to the serial console port. Remember that the serial console port is disabled on power-up if the system detects a link pulse on the SWC's Ethernet port. So, to activate a conventional terminal, you need to perform a shutdown from the SWC's console window, disconnect the SWC's Ethernet cable, and then turn the system on again.

The SWC's console window is a Java-based terminal-emulation applet with an HP 2392-compatible terminal interface. The SWC documentation indicates that it works with Netscape Communicator 4.0 or higher on HP-UX, and both Netscape Communicator 4.03 (or higher) and Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher on Windows NT and Windows 95. No mention is made of using the same version of Netscape Communicator on other versions of UNIX, however.

During our initial testing of the system, we used an HP OmniBook laptop, directly connected to the SWC's Ethernet port via a crossover cable. The laptop ran Windows 95, with Netscape Communicator 4.5 as its browser. Although we encountered no problems with command-line entries that scrolled in the same manner as an ASCII terminal, more-sophisticated terminal displays, such as those generated by the terminal version of the SAM system-administration tool, were problematic. Second-level menu selections within SAM, for example, failed to repaint the screen properly, necessitating an exit from SAM after each second-level menu operation.

We also tried connecting the SWC to our lab network and accessing the SWC from a SPARC-compatible workstation running Solaris 7 and Netscape Communicator 4.05. In this arrangement, the console window suffered the same redraw problems, but also suffered from discontinuous character flow, where some other window activity, such as mouse movement, was needed to complete the display of pending output. Our factory-loaded HP-UX 11.0 came bundled with both Netscape Navigator Gold 3.01 and Netscape Communicator 4.06. Running SWC from an X terminal using the A-Class as the X client, both browsers had the same problem with SAM displays, but did not suffer from the discontinuous character-display problem.

If one administrator is logged in and has a console window open, other administrators can still log into SWC and access a console window, but the second console window simply echoes the display of whichever console connected first. This feature can be useful for coordinated administrative training, but not much more. The main SWC browser window displays a list of administrators who are logged in, and underlines the name of the user who has an open console window. No other indication is provided to administrators who log in and subsequently open a console window. They may find the lack of a console-window response to be confusing until they see the first administrator's name underlined in the user display.

HP-UX 11.0

Release 11.0 is HP's latest release of the HP-UX OS, and its entry into the 64-bit OS fray. Using the same source code, HP compiles the OS as either 32-bit executables (for the A-Class, various other low- and midrange servers, and all workstations) or as 64-bit binaries (for V-Class, the T600, and some high-end K-Class servers). This release is also where the first results appear in HP-UX of the joint efforts between HP and SCO in defining 64-bit APIs. Recall the unusual chain of events that culminated in SCO buying UnixWare (along with the source code to UNIX System V): HP and SCO agreeing to work jointly on a converged set of APIs, and The Open Group (formerly X/Open) getting the right to say who could use the U-word.

If you haven't ordered the optional documentation CD-ROM, you can download or print the HP-UX 11.0 Release Notes from http://docs.hp.com. You will need to step through each of the eight sections of the release notes, however, as full copies of the documents in PDF format are not available on the HP site. A plaintext version is available in the /usr/share/doc directory on the system. The release notes give you a good idea of what is included in release 11.0. Other major online documentation groups that you might find of interest include the HP-UX reference manual volumes 1 through 9, "Installing HP-UX 11.0 and Updating HP-UX 10.x to 11.0," and the "Managing Systems and Workgroups" section.

The files in /usr/share/doc are of the readme-file nature. For some files, there are both plaintext and PostScript versions in the directory. Not all of the files pertain strictly to release 11.0, however. The boot.txt, configure.txt, and start_up.txt files, for example, all relate to release 10.x, and it is not clear that the features are identical in release 11.0, which may lead to confusion.

HP-UX 11.0 includes a variety of new features, including Dynamically Loadable Kernel Modules (DLKM); a new library and six new APIs, as well as two new commands resulting from the joint API definition work with SCO; minor changes in HP CDE 2.1; the X Window system upgrades from X11 R6.1 to 6.2; and the supported version of Motif moves from Motif 1.2 to 2.1. Memory dumps have also been redesigned with 11.0 to provide smaller, faster dumps, along with corresponding changes to the tools used to examine them. Most of the other changes in 11.0 relate to its 64-bitness, and don't affect the 32-bit compilation used on the A-Class. Release 11.0 does not yet support the 3-D graphics protocols OpenGL, PEX, and PHIGS, but that fact has no effect on the A-Class. Pertinent to the intended use of the A-Class, however, is the version of Sendmail included in 11.0 (v. 8.8.6), and the version of BIND (v. 4.9.3).

The ability of the A-Class to function in various Web-related roles comes from the combination of software included in HP-UX 11.0, plus WebQoS, an add-on product aimed at providing a predictable Web environment. WebQos lets you optimize resources, and gives you the capability to prioritize customers and users. One element of this is the Web-based management features of HP Domain Enterprise Server Management System (DESMS) software. DESMS provides a Web interface to various systems and Web-server administration functions. The screenshot shows the selection of management functions available from the operations section of the software. One of the features available from the DESMS configuration menu is a basic user-account setup. This lets you create a new user account and specify the login shell, but not the home directory or group. SAM is needed to set up NIS mapping for users and any NFS mounts required, as well.

On the Web-server side, HP-UX 11.0 includes the Netscape FastTrack Web server v. 2.0, along with the Netscape browsers mentioned above. The FastTrack server lets you set up rudimentary Web services, but for more serious Web sites, you may want to consider the most recent version of Apache, Netscape's Enterprise Server, or one of the other high-end Web servers.

Performance

The performance of the A-Class depends on its PA-7300LC CPU, a 32-bit processor originally designed for HP's entry-level B-Class UNIX workstations. The performance we saw with the A-Class reflects the increase in clock speed over that of the 132MHz B-Class system we reviewed previously. Our SPECfp95 score on the A-Class was 9.38, and the SPECint95 rating was 9.15 (see Figure 1). The multiprocessor SPEC tests, SPECfp_rate95 and SPECint_rate95, came in at 84.2 and 83.5, respectively. Figure 2 shows the SPECrate results compared with other systems. As one would expect, the A-Class SPEC results are lower than those of present 64-bit RISC systems from SGI and Sun, both of which abandoned 32-bit processors some time ago. The 180MHz A-Class also produces SPEC scores lower than the 400MHz Pentium II Xeon processor, which is now fairly common in Intel-based servers.

Interestingly, HP has chosen not to publish, at least at press time, benchmark results for the A-Class for the SPECweb96 benchmark, which would be an obvious choice for a Web-specific system design. SPECweb96 projects the maximum Web throughput (number of operations/second) that should be anticipated, but the reports include both throughput and response times at several points in the performance curve (see http://www.specbench.org/osg/web96/results/).

Based on similar SPECint95rate scores between the 180MHz A-Class and the 225MHz Origin 200, one might be tempted to assume a corresponding similarity in performance for SPECweb96 (the Origin 200 scores 1,810 on the test). Because SPECweb96 exercises considerably more than just the CPU, however, that assumption might lead one astray. The HP Visualize B160L, for which HP posted SPECweb96 results during the first quarter of 1997, scored 505 on the benchmark. For context, Sun's Ultra AXi running a 333MHz UltraSPARC IIi scores 856, and Compaq's ProLiant 3000 running a 300MHz Pentium II scores 1639. Rather than use the raw score of the SPECweb96 results, however, I prefer to look at the performance curve, and the response times at various ops/second levels, to get a better sense of how a system will hold up at acceptable response-time levels. I'd suggest that you take a similar approach by visiting SPEC's Web site. Perhaps HP will post results for the A-Class soon.

How It Rates

The design of the A-Class takes the PA-7300LC chip to the server level, and makes good use of the CPU in smaller configurations. HP's B-Class workstations, the original target for the PA-7300LC, pack a considerable amount of workstation into a small package. The A-Class chassis, however, has plenty of room for good internal air circulation--a factor that adds to reliability when the systems are stacked at high density in racks. While the PA-7300LC CPUs are less expensive to manufacture than HP's more-sophisticated processors, the supporting architecture does not take a commodity-component approach. For example, the system memory is comparatively expensive, evidenced by the price of the system we tested. Thus, while the A-Class hits the design mark for high-density rackmount servers (20 in a two-meter rack), more-robust configurations are pricey. As a result, design gets a two-flag rating on our scale--average.

Installation is straightforward once you have located the necessary documentation sources. However, we found the fact that basic configuration documentation does not come with the system to be troublesome, and decidedly inconsistent with HP's usual approach. HP's Web-based documentation is essential to the installation process. Absent the documentation, who would guess that the serial port is disabled by a link pulse being present on the SWC port, or that the default IP address

The Finish Line

for the SWC port is 192.0.0.192? If you don't have access to HP's product and documentation Web sites at the location the system is being installed, you are essentially stuck. Thus, we are compelled to rate installation for the A-Class as poor--a single flag.

Documentation for the A-Class is all online--the only printed documentation that came with the system was an emissions-standards booklet that included a diagram of the back-panel connections. The factory installation of HP-UX 11.0 includes online manual pages and rudimentary CDE user documentation, but the documentation most important to the system installer and administrator is on two of HP's Web sites. Further, online documentation has largely been reduced to plaintext for Web-access speed, so most of HP's tradition for quality documentation has been filtered out in the process. Because this lack of documentation affects the installation and configuration process, we are compelled to downgrade the A-Class documentation to poor, another single-flag rating.

Expansion is not a big issue in the stated design goal of the A-Class as a Web server. The system's two drive bays have ample storage space for the typical Web server. Storage beyond the 18GB provided by the two bays would usually be in an external disk array, or accessed via the system's LAN connection. A memory capacity of 1.5GB is also sufficient for a system of this performance level, and three PCI slots provide adequate room for options. The memory, disk, and expansion-slot capacities of the A-Class are similar to those of most small servers. Thus, we rate the expansion capability of the A-Class as average, a two-flag rating on the Performance Computing scale.

During our testing, the fundamental operation of the A-Class and HP-UX 11.0 was flawless. The only functional problems we encountered related to the glitches in the terminal-emulation element of HP's Secure Web Console. With the Internet market as the target for the A-Class, however, two elements in HP-UX 11.0 fall short of the mark. The version of BIND should have been upgraded to BIND 8, and not including Sendmail 8.9 we feel is a mistake. Although both packages are open source, having the latest version is important to any system intended to operate in an Internet-related role. Balancing those aspects of the operation of the system, the A-Class warrants a three-flag rating (good) for operation.

Performance is not a primary objective for HP with the A-Class. As mentioned earlier, HP's design objective was to provide an economical, high-density Web server in the A-Class. From our perspective, however, performance still plays a role, even if a subordinate one in this case. We found the SPEC benchmark scores for the A-Class to be mediocre. While we see no problem with the 32-bitness of the A-Class for its intended use, its processor is behind the speed curve with respect to its competition. Increases in the clock rate for the PA-7300LC have been minor since our review of the B-Class workstation in the February 1997 issue--from 132MHz in 1997 to 180MHz currently, and so, the SPEC results for the A-Class are behind current leaders. Thus, we rate performance for the A-Class as average, two-flags.

There are several aspects of the A-Class that we like. The vertically compact design lets you configure up to 20 systems in a two-meter rack--definitely useful in most data-center and ISP situations, and appropriate for Web service, where "divide and conquer" is the reigning server strategy. We also liked the integration of a Web-based administrative portal into the system, but the implementation of the SWC software needs work. Additionally, the A-Class documentation falls well short of the mark, and well below HP's tradition for excellence. The documentation deficiency also affected the installation of the system, as noted above. Whether the increased rack density of the A-Class and the benefits of buying from HP outweigh the cost of a system with larger memory configurations will depend on your particular situation. Overall, we rate the A-Class as average, two flags on the Performance Computing scale.

Ralph Barker is senior technical editor for Performance Computing.

HP's HP9000 A-Class A180C Enterprise Server

Hewlett-Packard Co.
3000 Hanover St.
Palo Alto, CA 94304
Phone: 650-857-1501 or 800-637-7740
Fax: 404-329-3009 or 800-231-9300

http://eproducts.hp.com/A-Class/

TESTED CONFIGURATION: Single 180MHz PA-7300LC CPU; 64K on-chip primary cache, 1MB secondary cache; 1GB RAM, expandable to 1.5GB; two 4GB 3½-inch SCSI-2 hard disks; single console port (db9, auto-disabled by Secure Web Console), no parallel port; 10Mbps Ethernet for Secure Web Console, plus 10/100Mbps Ethernet for primary LAN connection; external CD-ROM drive and cable; factory-installed OS (HP-UX 11.0) with HP WebQoS, no media, rackmount kit, keyboard, mouse, or monitor.

PRICE AS TESTED: $16,568

OPTIONS: 9GB disks can be substituted for the 4GB models, various PCI-based I/O cards are available as options.

EVALUATION: While not stellar from a performance perspective, the A-Class is a reliable system for high-density, rackmount configurations. Insufficient documentation caused problems during our installation, however, and we found that some software elements need additional work. Overall, we rate the A-Class as average, two flags on the Performance Computing scale, and feel that the expensive memory required by the PA-7300LC architecture may be a detriment in some cases.

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