[Info-vax] "The Machine"

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-08-31 14:33:15 +0000, rdpiccard at gmail.com said:

> On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 4:28:31 PM UTC-4, IanD wrote:
> 
> [snip]
>> 
>> While we are at it, why limit VMS clusters to VMS? The clustering 
>> component once ported to x86-64 could be potentially licensed to run on 
>> other OS's, in time.>[snip]
> 
> It was my understanding that everything about VMS clustering that could 
> be patented was patented in the late 1980s.  Likewise IBM's parallel 
> sysplex, and the Oracle code for shared locking.  I believe that 
> patents from those years expire 20 years from filing date or 17 years 
> from issue date; if these haven't already expired, they will soon.  
> Licensing cluster code seems an unlikely source of long-term, possibly 
> even of short-term, revenue.

Ignoring the legal aspects and whether there are any software patents 
lurking here...

The OpenVMS clustering code was ported to C, and was later open-sourced 
by Compaq as the cluster single system image (SSI) bits, and went... 
nowhere.

Some URLs from that era...

<http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/compaq-and-osdn-create-clustering-foundry-for-open-source-community-74216477.html> 

<http://www.openssi.org/ssi-intro.pdf> (lots of links in this PDF)
<http://compaq.com/alphaserver/download/Giga_IdeaByte_TruCluster_vs_Sun_Cluster.pdf> 

<http://opencf.org/home.html>

Ignoring that OpenVMS-style clustering doesn't scale up to where modern 
clusters are operating now, OpenVMS-style clustering is clearly not 
interesting to the market.

Y'all might ponder why this is, and whether that perception can be changed.

Ponder what different or alternative approaches might be used in its stead.

Then go see what software is actually being used out there.   What are 
its advantages and disadvantages.   Get some experience with it.

Then figure out whether or how you might market OpenVMS and its 
clustering against that.  If you can.

Ponder too what might be done around the ginormous price of clustering 
on OpenVMS, and the not-trivial costs of OpenVMS itself.

Further ponder what can be done to simplify the user interface for 
OpenVMS-style clustering to better meet current user expectations, as 
it's positively baroque to configure it — ill-documented and 
manually-performed shared file relocations and manual volume mounts and 
logical name redirections and host-based shadowing configurations and 
all the rest.  A whole lot of reading, to get this "right"...






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