[Info-vax] Container files are set to grow in importance on the IT road ahead

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2016-02-04 18:19:02 +0000, David Froble said:

> Kerry Main wrote:
>> 
>> Case in point - I spent most of a week downloading, installing / 
>> customizing dev and open source prod's on a new env .. would have been 
>> great to simply download a single LD file, then do a backup to my local 
>> disk.  Downloaded OS image could be setup with modparams updates, 
>> sysuaf quotas updated for specific accounts, latest Java installed etc 
>> ..
>> There are always some issues with gold disks, but they do have loads of 
>> value in larger shops.
> 
> Uh ....
> 
> Isn't this sort of like
> 
> $ BACKUP /IMAGE /VERIFY <custom system disk save set> <target>
> 
> Ya know, like we were doing 30+ years ago ????


For some environments, yes.   For others, no, that's really not.

Whole disk images — masters — are viable when configurations aren't 
moving very quickly.   If you're doing one OpenVMS rollout and some 
small number of application updates a year, and if your boxes are all 
mostly-the-same, then masters can and do work.

Masters are much less desirable when deployments are happening more 
quickly, and when there are requirements for site-specific 
configurations and customizations.   For preserving site-specific 
settings and parameters, for instance.

If your organization is pushing out updates more often — or are pushing 
out updates continuously, and pushing out security patches in a timely 
fashion, as is becoming increasingly necessary — then creating and 
using masters adds overhead.

The capabilities of PCSI and VMSINSTAL are quite limiting here in 
general, and — with experience using newer tools — really quite 
frustrating to use.

This frustration includes the lack of network access and dependency 
management, and the lack of a way to cache and to stage updates, for 
instance.

Then there's the lack of change control and tracking and the lack of 
cryptographic hashes for installed files and related bits that can be 
necessary in some environments.

The version-renaming shuffle for rollbacks underneath PCSI might cause 
a headache or two, too.

Then there's the lack of a competent relational database for these 
pieces and parts of OpenVMS and of third-party tools to use, because 
not everybody has or wants or can afford Oracle Rdb.



-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC