[Info-vax] Somewhat levels up to not port outside VMS (letter from Wyoming)

[Neil Rieck]

On Thursday, November 29, 2018 at 7:35:29 AM UTC-5, gérard Calliet wrote:
> It has been said about a proposal for an old VMS customer, where I 
> concluded “I’ll try a proposal to upgrade to some 8.x VSI VMS for 
> Alpha”, that:
> 
[...snip...]
> 
> Gérard Calliet

I am glad we ported our code from VAX/VMS to OpenVMS/Alpha
http://neilrieck.net/docs/openvms_notes_alpha_diary.html
then again to OpenVMS/Itanium
http://neilrieck.net/docs/openvms_notes_itanium_diary.html
but our ecosystem is populated by technical people (nerds) who understood the problems then proceeded forward anyway. I am currently involved with a couple of related projects in the corporate ecosystem which is populated my MBA dweebs. These people want absolutely "zero surprises" so I am afraid I would have to agree with the project lead that the only way forward is to go with an Emulation solution like Charon-VAX running on some sort of x86-64 platform like a DL385.

p.s. this is not the way to go if you need new functionality like "adding a web server"

Now I need to point out that MBA-types may be prolonging the inevitable in deferring to someone coming in behind them. In the case of VMS or OpenVMS, many hope that the system can be ported later (harder after you loose talent) or the company can eventually migrate to some sort of cheaper wiz-bang Linux solution. I can tell you that going the Linux way can open up a whole new problem as I have documented here:
http://neilrieck.net/docs/openvms_notes_linux.html#realworldlinuxproblems

The biggest problem with Linux is that you can inadvertently change the system during an upgrade, which will break something else. Then it is impossible (or virtually so) to roll back.

p.s. I have always been able to rollback an upgrade in OpenVMS or Windows 

I have first-hand knowledge of how this Linux problem is handled in "customer owned / IBM-managed" data centers (my employer has several). IBM will not give ROOT or SUDO privs to anyone without first submitting a written request then you need to wait 4-8 weeks for the response depending upon the urgency.
http://neilrieck.net/docs/openvms_notes_linux.html#ibm_managed

Other people may have a different spin on these issues but this stuff happened to me as I have written it.

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
http://neilrieck.net