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

[David Froble]

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 
> 

Yeah, all that.

However, my main point was, this ain't anything new.

And, if 90% is the same, with maybe 10% different, then as things now stand, 
using a master disk and changing 10% afterward is better than doing 100% for 
each system.

"As things now stand ..."