[Info-vax] Basic Questions

[Bob Gezelter]

On Sep 3, 3:38 am, Julian R A Manning <julian.r.a.mann... at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hello
>
> I have the following basic questions about VMS:
>
> Type of OS? For example is it single/multi-user, multitasking etc?
>
> General Features? For example firewall, GUI?
>
> Minimum Hardware Requirements?
>
> File Systems supported?
>
> Applications?
>
> Yours sincerely, Julian Manning

Julian,

OpenVMS is a multi-tasking, multi-user operating system supporting
both uni-processors and multi-processors. OpenVMS supports three
processor architectures: VAX (1977), Alpha (1992), and Itanium
(Emulation environments are available for both VAX and Alpha that run
under various operating systems on the x86 family processors). OpenVMS
clustering, released in 1982, is the original coordinated loosely
couple multiprocessing scheme, and remains unique in many ways today.
There is an excellent article on the architecture of OpenVMS clusters
published in Communications of the ACM (this article has been
reprinted in several books [if you cannot find the citation, please
followup and I will post it]). There was also an earlier article by
the original VAX-11 team on the VAX-11/780 that contains details of
the original goals (it was published by the IEEE Computer Society or
ACM; once again it should not be difficult to find on either's www
site, if you cannot, I have the citation).

ODS-2, its original native filesystem was an evolutionary development
from the ODS-1 filesystem used on the RSX-11 family of operating
systems for the 16-bit PDP-11 family. ODS-2 is still used, but a
further enhancement, ODS-5 (support for larger disks, longer
filenames, and mixed-case filenames ala java) is also supported.
OpenVMS can also access ISO 9660 volumes. A variety of utilities allow
access to several other volume formats.

A full description would be a VERY extended posting. I recommend
reading the following items:
 - the two articles cited above
 - the Users Manual and Programming concepts manual. Available via
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/os83_index.html
 - the VAX-11 Software Handbook, published by Digital Equipment
Corporation at the 1977 announcement remains a good summary.
 - "OpenVMS Security" in the Handbook of Information Security, H
Bidgoli, ed. [admittedly, yours truly is the chapter author[
 - the OpenVMS Internals and Data Structures manual is available, and
contains much detailed information about the internals of the
operating system

There is also the OpenVMS anniversary book, which should be available
on the OpenVMS www site at http://www.hp.com/go/openvms

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com