[Info-vax] Vax Station 4000 VLC

[Simon Clubley]

On 2018-12-27, Hans Bachner <hans at bachner.priv.at> wrote:
> Jan-Erik Söderholm schrieb am 25.12.2018 um 10:38:
>> [...]
>>
>> As have been said many times, a web *browser* is wasted money on VMS.
>> No sane person uses VMS as their "office desktop" today. [...]
>
> I'm certainly not asking for a full desktop environment on OpenVMS, but 
> a reasonable/usable browser should be rather high on the list. Given the 
> fact that most support stuff (patches, kits, ...) is accessible through 
> a browser (only, in many cases), there should be a way to directly 
> download this stuff to a VMS box and not go through intermediate systems 
> with different OSs.
>

Why ? Serious question. I'm having a really hard time seeing why getting
a full modern browser running on VMS is so important to some people.

Unless you have a VMS workstation on your desktop, you already are
using a system with a different OS to access your VMS systems.
If you are working at the physical console on your VMS server, then
there's a good chance your VMS system isn't in a suitable state
to access the Internet anyway.

You already use this browser to manage a wide range of devices within
your network already. Why is adding VMS to the list of things it manages
such a big issue ?

> Well, VSI offers their kits/ECOs on an SFTP server which changes 
> requirements a bit. But the old HP(E) interface into the patch website 
> was quite good, where you could look at details of individual ECO kits 
> and add them to your download list. I don't know how it looks today as 
> partners (DSPP/AllianceONE) have been locked out for quite a while now.
>

Those kits you download should be stored on a secure local storage server
anyway so you know you have all the pieces needed locally to rebuild your
systems from scratch if the absolute worst case happens.

The VMS systems should then pull the kit from that local storage server
and install from that copy so you know the kit made it ok to the storage
server without being corrupted.

You should always plan for the possibility that your vendor suddenly
goes bust or that the kits you downloaded suddenly become unavailable
from the vendor for some reason.

And no, I'm not saying VSI are about to go bust; in fact, I hope they
continue to grow as they appear to be currently doing.

What I _am_ saying is that you need to plan for the possibility that
kits from _any_ vendor you deal with suddenly become unavailable
(either temporarily or permanently) for some reason.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world