[Info-vax] Updated HPE/VSI OpenVMS V8.4-2L1 Marketing Brochures

[IanD]

On Friday, September 23, 2016 at 2:10:06 PM UTC+10, Kerry Main wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Info-vax [mailto:info-vax-bounces at rbnsn.com] On Behalf
> > Of David Froble via Info-vax
> > Sent: 22-Sep-16 11:24 PM
> > To: info-vax at rbnsn.com
> > Cc: David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com>
> > Subject: Re: [Info-vax] Updated HPE/VSI OpenVMS V8.4-2L1
> > Marketing Brochures
> > 
> > IanD wrote:
> > > On Monday, September 19, 2016 at 9:41:03 PM UTC+10,
> > clairg... at gmail.com wrote:
> > >> RE: Alpha
> > >>
> > >> Alpha is a very difficult issue for us. We have people coming to
> > us
> > >> looking for Alpha support but the only way we can provide it at
> > this time is for the customer to upgrade to a VSI release.
> > >> If you have been running on 7.3-2 for 10+ years do you really
> > want to disturb that environment?
> > >>
> 
> [snip..]
> 
> > >
> > > The current folk doing the port know zero about OpenVMS and
> > they are trying to move it all to linux.
> > >
> 
> A huge part of the TCO is Oracle licensing costs which are double for Alpha/IA64 due to Oracles anti-competition tax called their Processor Core Factor which for Alpha/IA64 is 1.0. When charging $25-$50K per core, this is a huge factor (add 50% per core if using RAC).
> 

Ouch, I had no idea it so so expensive

> The good news is that when OpenVMS X86-64/Oracle is available, the Processor Core factor will be 0.5 - same as Linux. Hence, OpenVMS on Alpha/IA64 customers should be able to cut their Oracle license costs by 50%.
> 

So Oracle have committed to x86 on OpenvMS?

I was under the impression they were fence sitting waiting to see if VSI was sustainable longer term?

> Also remember that there is a potential to reduce OpenVMS license costs in a migration because Alpha is core (cpu) based licenses, while I2/I4 systems are socket based.
> 

That's so interesting. I'm so out of touch with licencing stuff having been looking after an environment that's out of support for so long

> > > If someone had said to the business 12 months ago, here's how
> > we could move you off that old hardware and you could retain
> > your existing application functionality because it's a port on the
> > same OS / code base, I think they might have jumped at it.
> > >
> > > The only winner in what's happening where I work will be
> > Oracle and
> > > whomever does the development work and OpenVMS will
> > vanish as a
> > > presence here probably forever :-(
> > >
> > > There will be no future OpenVMS licensing agreements being
> > renewed
> > > here and that is a crying shame, it's the loss of a presence that's
> > > going to hurt OpenVMS going forward
> > 
> 
> The way I like to position these options as minimizing business risk with strategy options called "upgrade-n-integrate" vs. "rip-n-replace". The former is usually by far the lowest risk to the business while the latter usually is not only higher risk, but often orders of magnitude greater cost.
> 

Funny, I put together a document showing what they could do today. I created a simple html form that used the web server (WASD) to grab data out of RDB and display it to the screen - sure I'm simple but it showed them this is functionality available today - the Application people have been telling the business it's an old system and nothing more can be done as it's terminal based only (Lies, Dam lies, Incompetence...)

I titled one chapter "Parallel Enhance OR Risky Big Replace" ha ha ha, similar to what you are saying :-)

> See note above about Oracle license costs 50% reduction on OpenVMS X86-64.
> 
> > So, prepare a short presentation, and submit it to the powers
> > that be.  You could point out the "safety" in not losing the current
> > working app.  Costs would need to be pointed out, including
> > getting the sources, and building them first on itanic, and later on
> > x86.  Not going to be cheap, but perhaps much cheaper than a
> > from scratch re-write.  Once you got the sources, you would not
> > face that problem again, and you'd have future flexibility.
> > 
> > That re-write from scratch is going to have some problems, and
> > may never reach what you now have.  It's a bottomless money
> > pit.
> > 

They are already facing issues just getting the data over the Oracle. There some nasty data that is apparently in encrypted form in the DB and when I went looking, it's a function call to an external EXE which has no source code. Let's hope the encryption isn't anything complex. I'll have a go at brute-forcing the data trying the usual tricks that people did all those years ago like some simple bit-wise operators otherwise they are looking at getting some people in who know deciphering better than little old amateur me. 

It's an interest activity for me, I'm not actually part of the DB migration activities

> 
> I know of one Cust that tried literally for 8 years to move a large complex mission critical OpenVMS environment to UNIX (HP-UX). HP was helping them all the way, but they just kept having issues. After numerous different attempts, the business folks essentially told the IT dept "enough!". Last I heard they now have a couple IA64 nodes in their 8 node OpenVMS A-A homogeneous Alpha ES45 cluster.
> 

Sense prevailed!

I wish people here had the same smarts...

Our customer has been fed a stream of BS over the years and they think linux is their savior and will have them skipping off into IT heaven *sigh*

> > Never know, might work, and if it doesn't how are you worse off
> > than now?
> > 
> 
> Agree - the way to attack FUD from internal Linux groups is with discussions with senior management on lower business risk and lower costs. Fight fire with fire.
> 

I was fortunate that recently a senior manager from the business emailed a whole swag of people and I was on the list. I took the opportunity to email him directly my report and added a few pointy comments about how VSI had now taken over the reigns and that VMS had a strong future (It is also in my report actually as well about VSI but I wanted to make a point that the platform has a future)

I have not heard anything but at least I know he has directly got my report and that it didn't get filtered to the 'round file' as I suspect it might have done before when it flowed through other hands

> 
> Regards,
> 
> Kerry Main
> Kerry dot main at starkgaming dot com


I really like your posts, especially when you tell of how you approach delivery of key information - it helps me with sharpening my own delivery :-)