[Info-vax] The Future of Server Hardware?

[David Froble]

Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:

> All DS8000 volumes are visible from all three identical DS20e's
> so any physical server can take any role (dev/test/prod) simply
> by selecting the proper boot disk. If the prod system goes down,
> we can shutdown "test" and reboot from the "prod" system disk and
> we are running again. All consolse are also remotely accessable
> so this can be done anyware where I have my laptop with me.
> 
> Pretty OK for a bunch of old DS20e 666 Mhz boxes.

Here is an example of my perception of one of the reasons for the demise 
of VMS.  A vendor won't be profitable selling a small number of DS20e 
boxes, which need a bunch of custom components.

It's a matter of sufficient volume.

Yes, those DS20e systems do a wonderful job.  So good that you don't 
need maybe 100 of them.  Good for you.  Bad for the vendor.

If VMS didn't need custom low volume hardware, perhaps a vendor could 
make a profit selling VMS capable systems.  And that sort of brings us 
full circle again, huh?

Unfortunately, Compaq drank the Intel kool-aid.  While the port to IA-64 
has been a technical success, it has been a commercial failure.  Blame 
AMD.  They fired the magic bullet (Athlon 64) that fatally wounded the 
itanic.  If Compaq had had the sense of porting to the commodity 
architecure (x86) we most likely wouldn't have some of the problems 
we're facing today.  Ain't hindsight wonderful?

There are of course other issues.  HP not promoting it's own software, 
and instead promoting the software of others, making the software 
vendors (MS) rich, and HP missing that revenue.