[Info-vax] ODS-5 data/file recovery

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2013-02-17 13:23:37 +0000, MG said:

> Let this be a lesson to anyone foolish enough to think VMS, in its
> current form and shape, is useful as a serious file server (and thus
> for any data).  I'm going to be emulating VMS mostly from now on,
> this whole migration is part of my 'decommissioning' plan for my
> rx2620.  I don't feel like paying the electricity bills anymore.

Ayup.  OpenVMS is good for folks with existing OpenVMS applications, or 
a requirement for an OpenVMS application.

OpenVMS is not particularly packaged for, nor targeted at home users, 
nor home offices, nor small businesses.  OpenVMS aims much higher, and 
more specialized.

For a small site, OpenVMS itself is also quite expensive for a fully- 
and permanently-licensed configuration.  For a little more than a 
one-core Itanium license for just OpenVMS I64 itself, some very nice 
servers — all hardware and software — are available.   There are 
servers much better suited for typical home and small business uses, 
too.

For your plan to move to emulation, getting the networking going is the 
usual hassle.

Whether with emulation or with real hardware, OpenVMS is also not a 
very good client of other file servers.  NFS is the central and 
arguably the sole choice for that.  There's no SMB/CIFS client 
available, and no FUSE-style file system client for accessing an FTP or 
SFTP or WebDAV file server.



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