An introduction to the products and features of HP-UX Containers

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When to use an HP 9000 container
HP 9000 containers are ARIES-based PA-RISC execution environments. The applications under transition consideration
must be suitable for ARIES emulation. For example, only user space applications are supported. If any application
depends on kernel modules or specific device drivers, it will not work correctly under the ARIES and HP 9000 Containers
environment. For more information, refer to the
ARIES binary compatibility and product support statement.
While stand-alone ARIES-based transition can be the preferred path for standard ISV applications, the HP 9000
Containers solution is a better alternative for the transition of legacy environments that include mostly custom
applications. Use HP 9000 Containers solution if:
• The application environment is very old and the information about application components and dependencies is
not readily available.
• The application environment is very complex, such that it is difficult to extract the applications along with relevant
dependencies.
• The transition project aims to modernize large number of applications mostly not up to date with latest/current
versions of ISV software.
• The transition project aims to modernize a large fleet of PA-RISC based HP 9000 HP-UX servers.
• Ideal for running PoC (proof of concept) tests of applications being considered for use with ARIES.
When to use a workload container
Workload containers provide a filtered view of all resources on the system, including processes, file systems, and
network interfaces. Workload container configuration is highly flexible and allows administrators to set access
controls for a workload container that meets the workloads needs. Workload containers can help simplify
synchronizing environments across servers when utilizing Serviceguard, or similar high availability solutions. You
should also consider utilizing workload containers when the level of isolation for the container needs to be
customized to meet application compatibility or compliance purposes.
Because of this flexibility, workload containers are ideal for workloads that:
• Require IPC access to other applications running in a separate workload container
• Interact with services provided in the global
• Need to share common IP address access with the global or other workload containers
• Have minimum disk space available
• Need a quick setup time
• Share container directory across Serviceguard nodes
• Have minimal software dependencies on migration across HA nodes
• Have no requirement for:
– Unique hostname
– Private file system
– Private IPC namespace