HP Visualize B1000 Supplementary Manual page 5

Migrating Some
of the UNIX
Environment
02/04/00
Hamilton Laboratories). Tools like XEmacs and MKS also provide UNIX style editors and
some portions of a development environment.
The risks involved in this path are associated with the costs of rewriting applications to
ensure maximum performance levels under Windows NT. Currently, NT requires more
network infrastructure out-of-the-box, due to such items as browsing and domain
replication. All end users and IT staff will need training for the new applications and
systems environment. This will require budgeting for training classes. In addition, systems
procedures and processes need to be rewritten to accommodate the Window NT
environment and GUI style. Since this is a total conversion to NT, all necessary legacy
technical data will need to be converted and moved to the NT workstation environment.
This not only requires developing data conversion applications, but also the test suites for
this conversion.
Porting and migrating only the necessary portions of the Technical Desktop Environment
to Windows NT workstations requires all of same types of tools used for migrating the
entire environment. However, less code needs to be rewritten. A decision must be made as
to which standards of communication, such as DCE/RPC, will be utilized between
software in the NT and UNIX environments. Along with communication must come a
standard data format so that each environment retains and transfers the required technical
data. For example, by default, HP-UX uses a byte ordering known as big endian and
Windows NT uses a byte ordering known as little endian. This issue can be addressed in
HP-UX applications by using the "swab" routine to adjust the byte ordering of the data.
This migration path allows for continued use of the UNIX Technical Desktops while
phasing in the Windows NT workstation environment.
The challenge becomes one of providing a development environment that can produce
applications and environments applicable to either UNIX or NT. In this area the trend is to
develop code on a Windows NT workstation and "port back", that code to UNIX. There
are a few tools that can assist in this arena, such as OpenStudio and MainWin. These
development environments provide a tool set to create C++ application from a single
source stream for both platforms. Besides the cross-platform development challenge, an
opportunity exists to reduce the migration costs by ensuring that cross-platform system
management tools are in place. That is, System management tools that can operate from
either environment and manage either Windows NT or UNIX. This may reduce the
required amount of training increases productivity, lowering the impact to system
procedures and processes. Omniback, JetAdmin, and Openview provide tools to span
either NT or UNIX for system wide backups, printers or networks.
The risks involved in this path are similar in nature to the risks involved in migrating all of
the UNIX environment to Windows NT. However the magnitude of the risk is lessened.
That said, the network infrastructure will still need to be expanded and application code
will need to be rewritten. Training will still need to be provided to those developers,
administrators and users effected. Following this migration path is less costly and risky
since fewer UNIX technical desktop systems and applications are being ported and all
personnel are not effected by the change. Some new system procedures and processes will
most probably need to be created for the technical NT environment.
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