[Info-vax] VSI and Process Software announcement

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2016-09-26 20:10:40 +0000, Kerry Main said:

> 
> And to put things into further perspective as to why one needs L2 folks 
> to install (L1 ok to do daily admin) - things are going to get a lot 
> more complex.
> 
> As an example - BL890 OpenVMS blade servers now support up to 1.5TB of 
> local memory. How big is even a selective system crash dump file going 
> to be? Would you even create one or wait for issues? What are process 
> quota's?
> And that TB number will surely be going up as cheap new non-volatile 
> memories appear next year from Intel (3D XPoint) and others.
> 
> This is going to require a re-think of not only the server tuning but 
> also DB and storage tuning as well. The classic "many, many small rack 
> servers connected by slow LAN latency networks" vs "much smaller 
> numbers of very large blade servers" is going to come up (app specific 
> considerations).
> 
> Even with file storage - I have a local 2TB disk (mirrored 3rd party 2 
> TB drives- not supported but works great) on my local rx2600. Cost for 
> 2 drives, case enclosure and LSI controller was total about CAD$400. 
> For Cust's who struggle with disk storage, this is going to require a 
> re-think as well. I can store 20 full system image backup files  (6GB 
> or less each) and at 180GB have not even used up 10% of the available 
> space on that volume. With 10TB single drives now available (support in 
> next file system on OpenVMS), one has to again, re-think how files will 
> be managed in the future.
> With a 2TB common system disk, other than app specific hot files, is 
> there still the same push to move apps off the system disk? How to do 
> layout the App directory structures?
> [google BarraCuda Pro drives for info on 10TB drives]
> 
> Here is output from this big (and really cheap) disk "show device" on 
> my system:
> Free blocks = 3556200960 (1.65TB)Total blocks = 3905980417
> :-)


And wouldn't it be nice if none of that were relevant?

I certainly hope that VSI does not continue with the worst of the mess 
that exists now— the above is a demonstration of the utterly manual and 
non-self-managing state of OpenVMS — and starts looking forward.

As two examples from recent technical discussions....    Rather than a 
UI that is presently problematic for color-blind users and adding a way 
to alter the colors, maybe slightly alter the display colors by 
default, and make the UI more legible by default?   That won't address 
all users, but it'll help with some of the more common cases.    Maybe 
rather than cryptic configuration steps of moving files around to other 
directories to enable certain additional and useful features, just turn 
those features on by default, and give folks a way to disable that in 
the unlikely event they need that?    Maybe instead of 
default-cleartext transports, use and encourage and recommend 
encryption and secure transports by default?   There were and are may 
other conversations....

If OpenVMS doesn't start looking at simplifying and streamlining the 
configuration and management and troubleshooting — and all the details 
you've just pointed to — it'll effectively increase in difficulty to 
install, more difficult to manage, more difficult to tune, and requires 
more skilled and more costly staff.   I'd prefer to see OpenVMS on the 
"easier to use" end of the spectrum — it once was.   It likely won't 
ever get entirely easy, but that's a good goal.   Where OpenVMS is now 
is not a particularly good place for a sales and marketing effort, 
particularly against far larger and established vendors, and where some 
of the vendors are getting much easier to install and use.

As for our current requirements and practices and approaches?    What 
we do now had damned well better look like ancient and ugly history in 
ten or twenty years — and too much of what we're obligated to do to 
install and configure and manage OpenVMS now is increasingly becoming 
or is ancient history on other platforms — or the platform is going to 
be incrementally more difficult to sell outside the installed base.   
And if OpenVMS doesn't sell outside the installed base in quantities 
larger than the number of folks retiring or porting existing OpenVMS 
applications, that only ends in one place.  We all get to port.   Those 
of us that don't get to retire first, that is.



-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC