ISV Considerations


Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) are increasingly moving toward more flexible technologies. The market is moving in this direction in a big way, and the ISVs have lagged behind the hardware vendors. There are really two things to consider when determining how well an ISV application will support these technologies. The first is whether the ISV applications can run normally in an environment where resources can be turned on and off in a utility fashion and the second is whether ISVs will provide pricing options that will make using these solutions even more beneficial.

ISV Support

This is virtually the same topic as we covered in Chapter 3how well do ISV applications run in an environment where resources are being activated and deactivated as needed? The resource-allocation mechanisms are exactly the same as we described in Chapter 3. In other words, the CPU process scheduler handles CPUs coming and going, so the applications do not need to do anything special to run in this environment.

Some ISVs may balk at the idea of removing a CPU from the products control. They will say things like "that could dramatically impact the performance of the application." Well, yes, reducing the amount of CPU available to an application will likely reduce its performance. However, this can't impact the ability of the application to run, because the process scheduler will still run those threads, they are just running on fewer CPUs. So the only impact on the application will be performance. Now you have to ask the question why you are removing the CPU from this application. The only reasons you would be doing this are because you either have a higher- priority application that needs it or the application is not using the CPU effectively. In the former case, you are obviously willing to accept a performance impact on this lower-priority application to speed up a higher-priority one. In the latter case, the application is running much faster than it needs to so either the performance won't be impacted or the impact will still be within the boundaries of acceptable performance objectives. This is particularly important in this case because you are paying extra for performance that is exceeding your goals when you use these Utility Pricing Solutions.

ISV Licensing Options

Some ISVs are looking into supporting HP's Utility Pricing Solutions. As these solutions have become more mainstream, ISVs have become more willing to consider creative licensing programs to support them. That said, as of this writing, none of the ISVs have standard programs that support Utility Pricing. You will need to work with your ISVs to get them to support your specific needs.

One very important thing to note, though, is that even if your ISV doesn't support these Utility Pricing Solutions, this is not a reason to not to use them! If you configure a system or partition for a peak of 16 CPUs, the most you will have to pay for your software is a 16-CPU license. If you don't use Utility Pricing, you will pay full price for the hardware and full price for the software. If you use one of these solutions, you may still pay full price for your software, but the hardware will cost you less, so the overall solution will still cost you less.



The HP Virtual Server Environment. Making the Adaptive Enterprise Vision a Reality in Your Datacenter
The HP Virtual Server Environment: Making the Adaptive Enterprise Vision a Reality in Your Datacenter
ISBN: 0131855220
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 197

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