Hi Kristene,
from my point of view it is not more complex as any other heterogeneous three tier installation. I think the most important question for you should be "What is the motivation of your client to choose this combination?".
The advantages are probably good performance for a low price. The Windows application servers leverage a very good performance but they does not scale as good as some Unix flavors. My recommendation would be to use 4 CPUs with or without dual Core technology and 16-32GB of Memory. On the other hand you have a scalable database server with HP-UX (at least you can get one from HP - probably not as cheap as the Windows servers).
The disadvantages are that you have a inhomogeneous environment and you need knowledge for two platforms. You may be run into problems because the combination is not as well tested as others. But this is only a small risk, because you and I don't know how well which combinations gets tested. May be your target combination is not as extra ordinary as you expect.
From a license perspective or upgrade path you'll have no problem. But, you may be should ask HP which of the available CPUs you should choose. I would assume that Itanium is preferred by HP, but I can be wrong. Also on Windows you may be should ask which CPU you should use (Core 2, AMD or Itanium). I personally wouldn't choose Itanium for Windows (price / performance and unknown availability of Windows for Itanium in the future).
Best regards
Ralph Ganszky
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