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HP MediaSmart Connect is a digital media receiver that streams or syncs media from other personal computers in an area with Wi-Fi connectivity to be played and accessed on a television screen.

It utilizes Windows Media Center Extender for the television user interface of the MediaSmart Connect box.

It is also part of Hewlett-Packard's current MediaSmart brand, alongside HP MediaSmart Server and HP MediaSmart TV.

The HP MediaSmart Server is a home server from Hewlett-Packard that runs Microsoft's Windows Home Server operating system.

As of October 2008, the HP MediaSmart Server is sold in two models, EX470 (RRP US$599) and EX475 (RRP US$749). They feature a 1.8GHz AMD Sempron 3400+ processor, one Gigabit Ethernet port, four internal SATA drive bays, four USB 2.0 ports and one eSATA port.

The two models are identical with the exception of the amount of included storage: the EX470 has one 500GB hard drive preinstalled, while the EX475 has two 500GB hard drives preinstalled.

Hackers and enthusiasts have modded the EX470 by adding a VGA monitor, upgrading the memory from 512MB to 2GB and upgrading the processor to a 2.6GHz AMD LE-1640.

On December 29, 2008, HP announced two more models, the EX485 and the EX487, available for pre-orders starting on January 8, 2009. The newer models include support for Apple's Time Machine backup software. They also use a 2.0 GHz Intel Celeron processor, replacing the AMD Sempron from the old models. Other features include a revamped user interface and larger preinstalled hard drives (one 750 GB drive for the EX485; two 750 GB drives in the EX487).

On April 30, 2009, HP announced the MediaSmart Server LX195 which was intended to be a low-cost entry into the Home Server market. The new model featured a single internal 640 GB drive, a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom 230 processor, 1 GB of DDR2 memory, gigabit Ethernet, and four USB ports for storage expansion. The software features included with the LX195 are same as the initial launch features of the EX485/EX487 server

On September 14, 2009, HP launched two new MediaSmart servers. The EX490 comes with 1TB of hard disk storage and costs $549, while the EX495 comes with 1.5TB and costs $699 both 7200 rpm. The 490 comes with an Intel Celeron Processor 2.2 GHZ and the 495 with an Intel Pentium Processor Dual Core 2.5 GHz.

On November 30, 2010, The Windows Home Server team at Microsoft confirmed rumors that HP would not be offering hardware for the next version of Windows Home Server (codenamed "Vail"), and that HP would stop selling MediaSmart servers altogether after the end of the calendar year 2010.

HP-UX (Hewlett Packard UniX) is Hewlett-Packard's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on System V (initially System III). It runs on the HP 9000 PA-RISC-based range of processors and HP Integrity systems that are based on Intel's Itanium-processors. HP-UX was also available for later Apollo/Domain systems, and earlier versions ran on the 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 integrates VxFS as the primary file system. HP-UX 11i is currently credited with leadership in integrated mission-critical virtualization , observed performance, high availability and manageability.

The current shipping release is HP-UX 11i v3 (11.31) with the September 2010 update release (the 7th update for HP-UX 11i v3.

Characteristics

Since about 2000 the focus of HP-UX has increasingly been on enhanced reliability, security, workload management, and partitioning. The reliability is provided through single-system quality and self-healing, and in multi-system installations, clustering technology and application failover on a system outage, as well as error monitoring and correction. 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.

Security is integrated in HP-UX, with full 'trusted mode' shipping with v3. Features significantly increased with 11i v2, with the addition of kernel-based intrusion detection, strong random number generation, stack buffer overflow protection, security partitioning, role-based access management, and various open source security tools.

System partitioning (virtualization) ranges from hardware partitions to isolated OS virtual partitions on cell-based servers, and HP Virtual Machines (VMs) 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:

128 processor cores

2 TB main memory

32 TB maximum file system

16 TB maximum file size

100 million ZB storage

With the acquisition of Compaq in 2001, HP obtained another Unix-based system, the Tru64 for AlphaServer hardware platform. HP continues to sell Tru64 UNIX, together with TruCluster software, but discontinued AlphaServer manufacturing in 2007.

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 (1984)

Support for the HP Integral PC (embedded ROM version) basic kernel runs from ROM; other commands are disk based.

2.0 (1987)

First release for series 800. There may have been a different 2.x version for series 200 at an earlier date.

3.x (1988)

Series 600/800 only. Note: 2.x/3.x (for series 600/800) were developed in parallel with 5.x/6.x (for series 200/300/400), so, e.g., 3.x was really contemporary with 6.x. The two lines were united at 7.x (with different minor numbers for different series), so that series 800 jumped from 3.1 to 7.0 and series 300 from 6.5 to 7.01.

5.0 (1985)

Updated and renamed HP-UX 1.0 for the HP Integral PC. Supported series 200, 300 and 500.

6.x (1988)

Support for 300 series only. Introduced sockets from 4.3BSD. This version (together with 3.x) also introduced a feature of context dependent files (CDF), a method of allowing a fileserver to serve different configurations and binaries (and even architectures) 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 (1990)

Support for 300/400, 600/700 (in 7.03) /800 HP systems.Provided OSF/Motif.

8.x (January 1991)

Support for 300/400 600/700/800 HP systems. Shared libraries introduced.

9.x (July 1992?1995)

9.00, 9.02, 9.04 (s600/s800), 9.01, 9.03, 9.05, 9.07 (s300/s400/s700), 9.08 (s700), 9.09 (s700), 9.09+ (s700), 9.10 (s300/s400 only). These provided support for the series 300, 700 and 800 HP systems. Introduced SAM.The Logical Volume Manager (LVM) was presented at 9.00 for s800 as a replacement for the older methods of disk management. The easiest was 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 (1995)

This major release saw a convergence of the operating system between the series 700 (workstation) and series 800 (server) systems. (The OS no longer supported the older series.) There was also a significant change in the layout in the system files and directories, based on the AT&T SVR4 UNIX standard. Applications were removed from /usr and moved under /opt; startup configuration files were placed under /etc/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 (SD) tools. LVM was made available for s700, too.

This release included support for PA-RISC processors that support PA2.0, including 64-bit data registers. Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) were introduced for use within CDE. The root file system could be configured to use the Veritas File System (VxFS). For legacy as well as technical reasons, the file system used for the boot kernel remained Hi Performance FileSystem (HPFS; a variant of UFS) 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 (or root) does not have complete access to the system without following correct procedures.

10.30 (1997)

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 1x1 thread model (each user thread is bound to one kernel thread). 10.30 was also the first release of HP-UX that was fully year 2000 compliant.

11.00 (1997)

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 V2500 SCA (Scalable Computing Architecture) and V2600 SCA servers. Other versions supported the V-class server 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 (2000)

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 last two were intended for HP 9000 workstations.) 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 (2001)

Also known as 11i v1.5, this release of HP-UX was the first to support the new line of Itanium-based (IA-64) 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 (2002)

An incremental release of the Itanium version of HP-UX, it was designated 11i v1.6. This version achieved 64-way scalability, MxN 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 (2003)

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 generation.

11.31 (2007)

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 processors. HP-UX 11i v3 conforms to The Open Group's UNIX 03 standard. Updates for the 11iv3 are released periodocally, with the latest being update 7 , released in September.

Earlier history

The first version of HP-UX was 1.0, built about 1983. It started out based on System III Unix, and later on System V.

The first HP-UX, for the FOCUS systems (Series 500s), had a kernel written in MODCAL, a modified Pascal with extensions for low-level programming. Pascal/MODCAL was in vogue at HP for operating system work in the early-to-mid 1980s. This kernel in turn was hosted on top of another lower-level kernel called SUNOS (no relation to Sun Microsystems' SunOS) and emulated a file system similar to UFS on top of an HP-peculiar filesystem called Structured Directory Format (which led to curious features like the parent-directory references "." and ".." not actually existing in a directory as opened and read). The userland was a mix of AT&T, UCB, and HP sources.

The series 200/300 history also started out claiming System III and later System V. The HP-UX ROMs for the HP Integral PC had two versions: 1.0 which was System III based and 5.0 which was System V based.

HP announced its Precision Architecture in the second half of 1986, for two hardware lines: the HP3000 series 930 which had an equivalent HP9000 series 840, and the HP3000 series 950 which also had an HP9000 series 8xx equivalent. Unlike later PA-RISC systems, in the 3000/930 and 9000/840, the PA-RISC processor was spread across several boards of TTL.

At the time, HP did not have shippable quantities of hardware, but did have some installed at third-party developers sites. It was another year before MPE/XL was ready for its 1.0 release to customers, and in that time the HP9000 series 840 had shipped with HP-UX and the HP3000 series 930 had been dropped from the price list, not being enough faster than a classic HP3000 series 70 running a similar workload.

When it came time to do a Unix for the first PA-RISC systems (Series 800), at least the kernel was based on 4BSD but then worked over to make it behave more like System V and other HP-UXs. BSD-isms gradually got put back into it over the late 1980s and 1990s. That is, HP started a fresh port of Unix and then layered the old code and APIs on top.

The last release for the series 500 was 5.2.

Series 200 and Series 800 HP-UXs started with versions 1.0 and later got version number bumps up to other ports' version numbers as they became more compatible with those ports. So s200 went from 2.x to 5.0 when it got demand paging and more compatible with s500 5.0, and PA-RISC went from 3.1 to 7.0 when its user land was being built from common sources used in 7.0 on the s300.

By HP-UX 7 even the series 300 port was feeling somewhat BSDish, including the BSD Fast File System and a filesystem with long filenames.

Kernel had common source (across series 700/800 at least, maybe s300/400 too) in 8.0.

Operating environments

HP sells HP-UX 11i in Operating Environments (OEs). OEs are HP-tested and integrated operating system plus application bundles designed to simplify installation and maintenance while providing the functionality needed for the system's purpose.

In 2008, HP introduced new OEs for HP-UX 11i v3 to align application bundles with today's typical systems' use. OEs for HP-UX 11i v2 remain unchanged. The following lists the currently available HP-UX 11i v3 OEs:

HP-UX 11i v3 Base OE (BOE)

Delivers 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 (see below), plus software formerly sold stand-alone (e.g. Auto Port Aggregator).

HP-UX 11i v3 Virtualization Server OE (VSE-OE)

Delivers 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 (see below), plus additional virtualization software.

HP-UX 11i v3 High Availability OE (HA-OE)

Delivers 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 (DC-OE) -

Delivers everything in one package, combining the HP-UX 11i operating system with virtualization and high availability. 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 (11.23) - HP's public roadmap indicates v2 availability through December, 2010, while recommending upgrading to v3. The following lists the currently available HP-UX 11i v2 OEs

HP-UX 11i v2 Foundation OE (FOE)

Designed for the demands of 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 (EOE)

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 (MCOE)

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 (MTOE)

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 (TCOE)

Designed for both compute-intensive workstation and server applications, this OE contains the MTOE bundles plus extensive graphics applications and Math Libraries. This OE is bundled as HP-UX 11i-TCOE.

HP-UX 11i v1 (11.11), according to HP's roadmap, was sold through December 2009, with continued support for v1 at least until December 2013.

HP Application Security Center consists of products that were formerly part of the SPI Dynamics software company portfolio. The Application Security Center catalog includes DevInspect, Assessment Platform, QAInspect and WebInspect.

HP Business Availability Center includes several application management products: Business Service Level Management Software, Business Process Monitor, Business Process Insight, Discovery and Dependency Mapping, End User Management Problem Isolation, HP SiteScope, System Availability Management, TransactionVision and HP Universal CMDB software.

HP Data Center Automation Center consists of Business Service Automation Essentials, Network Automation, Server Automation, Service Automation Reporter, Service Automation Visualizer, Storage Essentials, Operations Orchestration and Release Control software.

HP Network Management Center consists of the following products previously branded as HP OpenView: Network Node Manager, Performance Insight, TeMIP, Report Pack for Cisco Wireless LAN Pack, and Report Pack for Radius Call Detail.

HP Operations Center catalog includes a number of products from its 2007 acquisition of Discovery and Dependency Mapping, GlancePlus Pak,Operations Dashboard, Operations Manager Dependency Mapping Automation, Operations Manager i 8.0, Operations Smart Plug-ins, Performance Manager, Reporter, SiteScope, and HP Universal CMDB.

HP Performance Center consists of four products gained from HP's 2006 purchase of Mercury Interactive: Center Management for Performance Center, HP Diagnostics, HP LoadRunner Monitors, and HP Load Runner.

HP Project and Portfolio Management Center(PPM) consists of nine products, many from its Mercury acquisition. The HP PPM catalog includes HP Deployment Management module, Discovery and Dependency Mapping software, PPM Demand Management module, PPM Financial Management module, PPM Portfolio Management module, PPM Program Management module, PPM Project Management module, PPM Resource Management module, and PPM Time Management module.

IT includes HP Business Process Testing, Center Management for Quality Center software, Change Impact Testing for SAP Applications, HP Functional Testing software, QuickTest Professional, Requirements Management module, Service Test Management module for SOA, Service Test and HP WinRunner software.

HP SOA center includes SOA Governance Interoperability Framework, SOA Policy Enforcer, SOA Registry Foundation, SOA Systinet and HP Universal CMDB software. The Systinet product is a result of HP's purchase of Mercury Interactive.

HP Service Management Center includes Asset Manager, HP Connect-It software, DecisionCenter,and Service Manager software.

Governance and E-Discovery solutions help companies meet the requirements of legal Electronic Discovery and compliance regulations. The solutions meet the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) for capturing, classifying, preserving, finding, analyzing and recovering information. Products include HP TRIM Record Management Systems for electronic document management and Records Management, HP Integrated Archive Platform for compliance archiving, and HP Clearwell E-Discovery Platform for legal analytics.

Business intelligence solutions include hardware, software, services, and partner technologies designed to permit companies to gather, store, access and analyze corporate data across various systems to aid in strategic planning and decision-making. HP Neoview is the company’s enterprise Data Warehouse platform.