Guest post by As Mark Twain famously wrote, “…the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”. So with OpenVMS.
VMS Software, Inc. (VSI) today announced the worldwide availability of VSI OpenVMS Version 8.4-2 (Maynard Release) operating system for HPE Integrity servers. The Maynard Release is the second by VSI. The new OS is compatible with HPE Integrity servers running the latest Intel Itanium 9500 series processor, as well as most prior generations of the Itanium processor family. VSI also reconfirmed plans to offer OpenVMS on x86-based servers.
“This second release reaffirms our long-term commitment to the OpenVMS platform, and builds upon our highly successful first release of OpenVMS in June of 2015,” said Duane P. Harris, CEO of VMS Software. “It is the first of many exciting improvements planned for OpenVMS, including future updates to the file system, TCP/IP, and other major improvements that we look forward to sharing with our customers as we work our way through the planned roadmap.”
Such a fine o/s that underpins a lot of the world, even today. I’m keeping an eye on this.
Immortality is mission critical software dependent on legacy technology.
Glad to see OpenVMS continue. I’m hoping we do get X64 support, as I’d love to run it on some of my hardware instead of just emulation.
and then the very slow moving iceberg will make contact! 😉
Here’s hoping they make it more interesting this time. That movie was dreadful.
Edited 2016-04-13 14:20 UTC
Is the OpenVMS hobbyist program still available?
I’m not sure if its still active or not, but I did find a sign up link here https://h41268.www4.hp.com/live/index_e.aspx?qid=24548&design=cs
I got a hobbyist license earlier this year. They responded fast for the request as well.
Edited 2016-04-13 18:54 UTC
What is openVMS / VMS good for – and why?
Why would you use it instead of Linux or windows?
Is it very good as say concurrency? Or does it support particular hardware assisted partitioning and hot-plug everything?
Does it implement granular security controls more than say Linux?
Is its development much better engineered than say OpenBSD?
Do they really focus on performance – throughout for IO transactions?
—
Doesn’t mean much just to say “mission critical” .. without explaining and yes I’ve looked at their website and wikipedia etc
OpenVMS, on its very short list of supported hardware, is immensely stable, lets you run clusters that can be upgraded part by part whithout interrupting the services provided, the security design is supposedly very good and sensibly designed, with focus on limited roles and very granular access levels. There’s also been very few exploits, though to be fair that might be because it’s a small niche. Besides, it runs a bunch of software designed in the same spirit, which I bet is easier to keep in use than to find replacements for.
So yeah … it’s a boring but apparently very well written OS, sort of like a bastard child of OpenBSD and Windows server with better clustering.
Oh, and the shell is weird. Just as an example, you don’t “change directory”, you “set the default directory” – with “set default”. It will, however, let you abbreviate any command and verb as long as it’s unambiguous, so “set def” works fine. The path syntax is also weird, and a bit nearer to DOS style: “DISK1:[HOME.DNEBDAL]example.txt” for something like “c:\home\dnebdal\example.txt”. Oh, and it has a form of versioning: “example.txt” is the newest version, while “example.txt;7” is the 7th one counting from the start – or from the last time I PURGEd the older versions. Oh, and you can do “set def server$disk2:[shared.data.examplefiles]”, the file sharing system is very well integrated.
I really should find a replacement BIOS battery for my Alpha PWS.
Edited 2016-04-13 15:57 UTC
I wrote a piece for OSNEWS several years ago on OpenVMS. it may be of interest. It can be found at: http://www.osnews.com/story/15222/OpenVMS_-_a_System_of_Structure/
Also, the entire OpenVMS documentation set is online, presently on HP’s www site.
One important thing to remember is that *IX conventions are not universal.
No, they’re not. But they’ve won the battle. All of the other conventions are slowly falling away.
Consider that Java and the JVM (which runs on Unix, Windows, z/OS), the most popular, widely deployed, portable language, makes pretty much everything look like a Unix system.
(old) Java runs on OpenVMS too 😉
VMS is really robust. It’s very well known for it’s clustering. It’s also well known for the OS provided services, it offered a lot out of the box, offered excellent development tools, and top drawer documentation. Many of those services we take for granted today, but they’re OS level services, rather than “just programs that happen to run” on top of the OS.
The UNIX model is a kernel and user space, VMS is more integrated than that.
I won’t go to say that VMS is necessarily secure. It comes from a different era, it was considered secure back in the day, it has some solid foundations, but the simple truth today is that it has not been tested like the other platforms in the wild. Much like the Mac is considered more secure than Windows just based on the underlying mechanisms, the Mac has still not been under the glaring microscope of the hacker community like Windows has.
VMS should be secure, but, especially compared to other modern systems, it’s very untested.
NT is the current inspirational progeny of VMS.
It doesn’t seem you looked that hard, honestly.
It’s good to know I’m not the only one who thinks this!
Refer to the video “VAX/VMS Buzzwords” for understanding the terminology that is responsible for this point of view. 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDZibyZi0VE
LOL.
We’re “forced” (due to software requirements) to run two OpenVMS systems at work.
One of them has been here for over a decade, and only a year or three ago migrated off the Alpha platform onto Itanium. Still using Ultra-320 SCSI disks, that are approaching the $500 CDN per 130 GB disk mark.
Our other one was brought in a year or two ago running on Itanium with SAS harddrives. The long-term migration plan (according to the software vendor) is to Windows Server on amd64 platform, but that’s still many years away.
Thankfully, we don’t have to do any management/administration of these two boxes. If anything goes wrong, tech support is a phone call away, and any parts are here (with a tech in tow) within 24 hours. These are strictly hands-off systems, and we just use the software running on top.
Edited 2016-04-14 20:11 UTC
Contact Stromasys – they have a solution that will fix your legacy systems requirement, those scsi disc contents can be virtualised to files. The virtual hardware boots in seconds and will run faster than the original hardware. You’ll remove the hardware, the vulnerabilities and the apps will run just as they ever did. You can replace them in time without panicking.
I do the migrations from Vax/Alpha to virtual environments regularly, a big one takes a weekend. An installation, creation of virtual drives, a backup and a restore, configuration and test boot, start application – done!.
I’d gladly deal with OpenVMS rather than some of Microsoft’s “everything depends on IIS whether it makes sense or not” mentality on their server solutions. It couldn’t possibly be worse than SCCM 2012 troubleshooting when the IIS server decided to go ass over elbows.
We try to avoid Windows Server as much as possible, as well. We only have 2 installs (one the provides the reporting functions for the OpenVMS server; the other that provides distributed library cataloguing services for the schools). Again, we made sure to get the good support contract, we we are very much hands-off with those servers (like with the OpenVMS servers). We worry about the software running on the OS, but everything from the OS down to the hardware is someone else’s problem. These 4 servers are very much silo-ed away from everything else on the networks, and run in standalone mode (no ActiveDirectory, no network shares, etc).
We are very much an OSS shop, with Debian Linux and FreeBSD on all servers, and about 90% of the desktop computers in the district, with Chromebooks outnumbering iPads when it comes to mobile devices.
So do I. Unfortunately, that decision was made long before I came to this job and I’m stuck with it. I’d much rather have a Linux or OpenBSD server, but I’d take OpenVMS too. Unfortunately, there’s that little problem of applications…
VMS and Unix are old, VMS has a different design than Unix and many gurus say that VMS is better designed than Unix. OpenVMS is extremely reliable, uptimes of several decades are common for a single OpenVMS server.
For instance, I know a big stock exchange that ran their stock system on OpenVMS. They had another stock system on Unix, and the most senior sysadmins, said that Unix is unstable in comparison to OpenVMS. Sometimes they had to reboot the Unix servers, but never with OpenVMS. When asked about Linux he just laughed and said it is marginally better than Windows – under high load. Under low load, even Windows is stable. If you stress Linux very much, it will crumble and won’t serve all the clients as good as under low load. Unix might sometime under rare circumstances become unreliable under very high load, but OpenVMS is totally unaffected no matter what load. All clients are served, just a bit slower. Linux might totally stop serve some clients, and other clients become starved, and some clients are served quickly, Linux becomes very jerky under high load. That is the reason sysadmins say that Linux is not a reliable server OS. It is only good for light loads. Sysadmins that are not used to very high enterprise loads, serving 1000s of clients, dont know that Linux is unstable in those scenarios. Sysadmins that use Linux for small 2-4 socket servers with moderate load, dont ever see Linux become jerky when starved of resources under high load.
OpenVMS clusters are legendary. You can have a cluster with different OpenVMS versions, different cpu architectures and swap out everything without affecting the uptime. During 9/11 terror attacks, the OpenVMS financial clusters in Twin Towers, failed over to their backup site without never missing any transaction. All the clients were totally unaffected and never noticed anything.
OpenVMS rivals Mainframes in terms of stability. Sure, it is not the sexiest OS, but only Mainframes can compete in terms of stability – on a single server. And if you bring in a OpenVMS cluster, there is no contest, the OpenVMS cluster are far more stable than Mainframes. OpenVMS clusters are the most reliable thing out there. Lot of critical services still run OpenVMS clusters still today. If OpenVMS came to x64 it would be great.
My experience back in the day (VAX-11/730 vs 16MHz 386) was that the /730 with VMS and the 386 with Unix (System V, IIRC) gave similar performance, until the system became busy and the /730 left the 386 in its dust. Of course, there were also situations under which a hot J-11 outperformed a VAX-11/780, so your mileage may vary. Or may have varied, in this case.
About the time Alpha happened, I was involved with a company that made a real-time clock for TURBOchannel. Comparing VMS to OSF/1 on the same hardware, VMS interrupt latency was consistently very short regardless of load while OSF/1 was all over the place.
Sadly, as more of the VMS kernel migrated to C, I started to see that variability happen in VMS as well. I don’t know how well it does today on Itanium hardware; I assume the VMS kernel has been tightened up over the years, but I no longer have access to hardware that can measure it.
BTW, if interrupt latency is your thing, the VAXstation 4000/60 is much better than the VAXstation 4000/90, despite being a slower machine.
I’ve downloaded the AXP test release and will probably try it on my TS10 or the es40 this weekend.
Very exciting.
I can’t adequately explain how excited the x86 port makes me though. Can’t praise these guys sufficiently highly enough!
🙂
What hardware could you buy on eBay to run this version of OpenVMS?
Go search for ‘Compaq Alpha’
The released version of OpenVMS 8.4-2 (Maynard) runs on HP’s Integrity servers (see VSI’s Product page for details).
There is an Early (REPEAT: EARLY) Adopter’s kit for Alpha-based systems, but it is not yet a committed product (it is also only an update to an existing installation of 8.4).
To run 8.4-2 at present, one needs an HP Integrity server.
Or Intel Itanium-based systems.
You’ll need an alpha, but make sure it’s an alpha that has SRM and not just AlphaBIOS (ARC). Some alpha’s were only ment to run WintendoNT and Linux.
If it has SRM, then it’ll run Tru64, WintendoNT, VMS and Linux and NetBSD. FreeBSD people don’t like Alpha users and abandoned us years ago.
VMS runs on 3 radically different/incompatible architectures. VAX, Alpha and Itanium. Soon VSI promises it’ll be on x86_64 (which excites me).
So.. you can run it on all sorts of hardware. If it’s itanium, make sure it’s recent and HP.
There’s also some nice emulators out there if you just want to play. If that’s the case, try the excellent simh (http://simh.trailing-edge.com/) which amoungst other things emulates a VAX 3900 under wintendo or on *NIX.
If you’d like a bouncing ball guide, check Phil Wherry’s excellent bouncing ball guide:
(http://www.wherry.com/gadgets/retrocomputing/vax-simh.html)
Here’s some tips for newbies (http://ns4.reboot.net.au/VMS-TIPS.TXT)
Hope you enjoy something a bit different!
VMS is suitable for greenfield development. There are commercial virtualised hardware options so that you can already run VMS on windows hardware. This allows you to run ‘instances’ of VMS operating systems that can be cloned at will. This allows multiplication and distribution of development platforms to teams at will. This is being done now…
VMS still underpins enormous amounts of your lives. It is the operating system that you will never see but which allows you to live. It controls scada systems in warehouses and factories, it runs nuclear power stations, weighbridges, trackside signal control, military hardware and even the most up-to-date commercial jets designs and hardware layout databases and apps are running on VMS.
Just because you don’t know about it doesn’t mean it isn’t very important to your life.
Oh man… the 90s are going to be rad!
I can’t seem to find a Chef kit for VMS. Or for that matter an up to date Ruby kit.
On the bright side I can authenticate against LDAP/Active Directory, so at least I don’t need to manually manage everything like a neanderthal.
Not an advert but Stromasys make a personal alpha product where you can run a virtualised Alpha hardware on your Windows system. All you need is the VMS hobbyist licence and a copy of the VMS in a virtual disk and you can be running VMS on your Windows desktop NOW. I have it on my desktop now.
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