[Info-vax] VMS First-Boot on x86 Contest

[Paul Sture]

On 2018-02-15, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) <helbig at asclothestro.multivax.de> wrote:
> In article <14f431aa-8ecc-42e8-805d-238b89a11852 at googlegroups.com>, Neil
> Rieck <n.rieck at sympatico.ca> writes: 
>
>> p.s. a full copy of CentOS-7.x can be burned to a single DVD.
>
> VMS with all layered products as well?  CD?  No.  DVD?  Blu-Ray?  

Downloadable image, over a secure channel, with GPG or other suitable
checksumming method(s).

> Hopefully VSI will change things so that a new VMS installation
> installs EVERYTHING.  Disks are cheap.  Really cheap.  If necessary,
> some functionality could be restricted via licensing.

No, we don't want EVERYTHING, we only want the components needed for
this instance's requirements.  The attack surface area should be
kept to the minimum.

Microsoft had a better idea more than a decade ago[1].  In Windows
Server 2008, the installation from DVD (or in the context of a virtual
client, the DVD image copied to disk) put the whole shooting match to
container files on disk, where all the components (e.g. Active
Directory, Web Server) were available right there for installation
proper[2].  No more chasing physical installation DVDs when you have a
fleet of servers to manage.

[1] Windows Server 2008 was released 10 years ago this month:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Server_2008#History>

[2] Where this method fell down was that when installing components at a
later point in time, those components were usually well out of date, and
needed updating to the latest version before proceeding to the
configuration stage.  Welcome to Reboot Hell.
 
-- 
If the brain was simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to
understand it.