[Info-vax] Marketing ideas for VSI ?

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax <info-vax-bounces at rbnsn.com> On Behalf Of johnwallace4--
> - via Info-vax
> Sent: December 14, 2018 1:11 PM
> To: info-vax at rbnsn.com
> Cc: johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk
> Subject: Re: [Info-vax] Marketing ideas for VSI ?
> 
> On Friday, 14 December 2018 16:21:09 UTC, Jon Schneider  wrote:
> > Thanks Stephen.
> >
> > that's about as good an explanation as I have ever seen.
> >
> > Jon
> 
> Thanks for joining in, hope you enjoy it :)
> 
> As Dave Froble just said, choose the right tool for the job at hand. Which
may
> mean knowing something about some of the less visible tools, regardless of
> whether they are old or new.
> Also bear in mind that hardware has changed and software sales channels
> have changed since the early days of VMSclusters.
> 
> The term "cluster" has been so degraded since the 1980s and 1990s when
> DEC introduced the original (VMS)clusters, based around a then market-
> leading OS designed from day 1 to support clusterwide shared storage
(which
> could also be shared or replicated across sites if appropriate), and a
> clusterwide distributed lock manager, and on top of those fundamentals,
lots
> of other things which the OS and applications could choose to use (or to
not
> use).
> 
> Maybe the term VMScluster should have been trademarked back in the day.
> But it wasn't. Anyway...
> 
> You could have an active-active loadsharing VMScluster (if required,
active-
> active-active...) or active/standby, you could basically do lots of
scalable
> available robust stuff reasonably cost effectively, in comparison with
what
> else was on the market at the time. You could start small and grow, rather
> than do everything up front. You could have safe clusterwide shared
> readwrite access to clusterwide storage (files and blocks). All of these
in a
> way that no other product family quite matched.
> 
> The "clusters" word (just the word, not the concepts) became so
fashionable
> that two tin cans and a piece of string, sharing nothing and achieving not
> much, could be marketed as a cluster, because clusters were A Good Thing
> (like clouds are a good thing this week, right).
> 
> And if two cans and a piece of string was a good fit, why not use it if
the price
> is right.
> 
> Variants on the VMScluster theme included the cluster software eventually
> developed for DEC's Tru64 UNIX, and to a lesser extent the "cluster"
> software eventually released for various flavours of Windows NT and
> successors.
> 
> The Tandem NonStop folks even developed a NonStop Clusters for SCO
> UNIX product, which was interesting but even less visible than VMSclusters
> were (and very different).
> 
> So, when wanting to refer to (or ask about) VMScluster-specific benefits
and
> features, bear in mind that clusters means different things to different
> people, e.g. a Hadoop "cluster" is not like a VMScluster, and nor is a
Windows
> SQL Server cluster.
> 
> There's a fairly basic Wikipedia article on VMSclusters, but it may lead
to
> places  more suited to what its readers are looking for.
> 
> As with the world of Linux, everyone's got their own opinion about what's
> best (even before the requirements are properly identified), and
> fragmentation of products, ideas, and even of the audience can be a
> problem.
> 
> One size does not fit all. That's the main thing to bear in mind. In
addition,
> newer does not *necessarily* mean better - as you've just discovered with
> Google Groups, and as many folks are discovering with anti-social networks
> in general.
> 
> Best of luck. Have a lot of fun.

OpenVMS Clustering is simply a high end and solid implementation of a shared
disk (everything) cluster. Other implementations of this same shared disk
cluster strategy are z/OS and Linux/GFS2.

Reference: Linux/GFS2: (given the infancy of GFS2, one could argue that GFS2
does not have the hardened experience gained with many years of actual
implementations as OpenVMS/ zOS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFS2

Windows/UNIX/Linux/NonStop are simply an implementation of a shared nothing
cluster.

Pro's and con's with both.

Best explanation I have seen that documents pros and cons can be found here:
http://www.benstopford.com/2009/11/24/understanding-the-shared-nothing-archi
tecture/ 

Another historical view on shared disk from almost 30 years ago:
http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/dtj/vol3num3/vol3num3art2.txt 


Regards,

Kerry Main
Kerry dot main at starkgaming dot com