[Info-vax] Message from HP.

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk wrote 2013-12-10 15:26:
> On Tuesday, 10 December 2013 13:13:25 UTC, John Reagan  wrote:
>> On Monday, December 9, 2013 2:20:23 PM UTC-5, johnwa... at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
>>
>>> On Monday, 9 December 2013 17:20:47 UTC, John Reagan  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>
>>>> On Monday, December 9, 2013 11:59:00 AM UTC-5, Gérard Calliet (pia-sofer) wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>
>>> Try this for size, in the absence of the Hal Massey presentation:
>>
>>> http://ftp.hp.com/pub/nonstop/ccc/nov0608.pdf
>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Read a little farther down that same .pdf and you'll see that LSUs are no longer used.  They exist on H-series Itaniums but they don't exist on J-series systems (ie, blades).  It is now software-only.  I suspect that NSK on x86 will be a software-only solution.
>
> Maybe so. There were some bits in the Illuminata paper that struck me as (at
> best) insufficiently detailed, but in a vendor sponsored 6 page paper that's
> not really a surprise.
>
> For example, there's a tease about the future possibility of resurrecting
> triple modular redundancy which had historically been an option of interest
> to 10-15% of the NonStop market. The blade-based NonStop couldn't do it (at
> the time of the paper).
>
> The role of a Cluster IO Module (CLIM) is somewhat skipped over as well
> (standard redundantly-configured Proliant server+connectivity, software details
> totally unclear).
>
> Regardless, if the NonStop folks are going to be confident enough that suitably
> qualified x86-64 hardware suits them, and that all they need on top of that is a
> decent OS of their own, can the VMS world "leverage the synergies" (yuk) of
> e.g. having some other organisation already having done lots of hardware
> qualification work? (That should have been an option long ago anyway to anyone
> who wasn't inseparably attached to IA64).
>
> I'm thinking one difference between the VMS world and the NonStop world is the customers.
>
> The finance sector (and in particular the trading operations) have been looking
> at significant increases in volume, and therefore have needed to buy more kit
> more frequently (be they NonStop customers, VMS customers, or more recently,
> Linux customers).
>
> The VMS users that Gerard mentioned run (ran?) factories, maybe utilities such
> as power and water (both, markets I used to know). These customers have
> probably not needed that much increase in power in the last decade or more. So
> the manufacturing customers haven't needed to spend much money with HP (or
> CPQ).
>
> But if these folk want to move off VMS, they're looking at spending quite a lot
> of money. Not just a few x86 servers and a few Windows licences plus some
> VMS-emulation middleware (or VAX/Alpha emulation). In the absence of a visible
> future for VMS, these folks will be looking at a redesign from scratch,
> preferably on an OS/supplier combination with a ten year future. Can't do that
> with Ruby on Rails and a few agile programmers.
>
> You can maybe do *some* of it with a smart(er) ERP system and a redistribution
> of workload between IT kit and PLC kit. Jan-Erik (?) mentioned this - surely
> there's nothing that SAP can't do, given a big enough budget?

Yes, that was me. Our VMS system does *some* things that their ERP might
do, and some other things that might be "moved down" to some PLC solution.
And they look (as I wrote) at some MES system. Something like Rockwell
"Factory Talk" (or similar):
http://www.rockwellautomation.com/rockwellsoftware/factorytalk/index.html

Someone remember BaseStar ? :-)
Is this still an active product !?
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/commercial/basestar/

Jan-Erik.


>
> But how workable/affordable will that be in (say) the automotive sector where
> there is years of business logic and factory floor knowledge in the VMS applications?
>
> Even though there's been relatively little visible spend for HPQ on these
> setups in the relatively recent past (why would there be?), there's going to
> have to be money on the table here somewhere, either to keep these setups going
> on VMS, or to move them off VMS.
>
> How much money, to do what, and who is going to get it, may be questions of
> interest to some folk.
>