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

[Bob Gezelter]

Kerry,

LD type containers, fine (when I mentioned DVD, I was actually referring to ISO images, I too rarely pull out the DVD anymore, preferring to load it somewhere on a drive with free space).

However, this collection of infrequently used (*&^* should NOT be on the system drive.

Drives may have gotten larger, but filling the system drive with a pile of read-only, infrequently used bulk material is a poor idea for several reasons including:

- replication is not needed, access over the network is fine; and
- in a fast provisioning VM world, such common supporting material is dead weight when provisioning VMs and operating.
- Updating the kit images over time is a constant time chore (even with provisioning tools, it does not scale well and is a resource waste).
- This material becomes a significant part of backup (and restore volume).

Yes, storage is cheap. But to paraphrase the late Senator Dirksen, "A gigabyte here, a gigabyte there ...". Consider what happens when one is using tools to create a large number of virtual OpenVMS instances on a service such as AWS. Does one really want a multi-gigabyte collection of stuff for each instance? It adds up and increases ones monthly invoice (OPEX). Backing up the system disks becomes commensurately larger. A poor bargain. Much better to have a separate read-only disk that is shareable among all of the instances.

Small system disks scale far better than large ones. We should be looking at minimizing what is on a system disk to improve the economies of scaling on services such as AWS.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com