[Info-vax] Distributed Applications, Hashgraph, Automation

[DaveFroble]

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2018-02-21 21:21:17 +0000, DaveFroble said:
> 
>> As many are aware, I don't get out much, so I have no idea what 
>> percentage of users would fit the description of needing varying 
>> resources.  My experience is more with situations where the 
>> requirements are more fixed, basically the same every day.
> 
> A number of sites have seasonal activities and/or have peak seasons, and 
> for any of various business-related reasons.  Ask'm what their upgrade 
> window is, and when their systems are most heavily loaded.
> 
> Some other sites have incremental growth with plots out six months or 
> longer; plots with predictions of when their capacity requirements will 
> outgrow their current hardware.
> 
> But varying loads can also include operational-related activities such 
> as running backups, activities making heavy use of encryption or 
> compression, or of running weekly or monthly reports, optimizing a 
> database or local storage, or whatever, too.
> 
>> Got any numbers showing the distribution of users based upon varying, 
>> or non-varying requirements?
> 
> No, I don't.
> 
> What I do see are a lot of folks with lots of spare cycles on their 
> OpenVMS systems; with larger-than-necessary server configuration than 
> they need for their typical load.  Existing supported server hardware 
> and software forced many (most?) OpenVMS folks into over-building and 
> over-provisioning their data centers.
> 
> We're all also used to the effort involved in spinning up a new OpenVMS 
> system instance, which gets back to integrating the pieces and parts and 
> core services into the base distro, of integrating IP networking, of 
> provisioning, of streamlining the patch process, of sandboxing and app 
> isolation, and other assorted details.
> 
> OpenVMS is headed into an era when that over-provisioning won't be as 
> centrally required, as support for x86-64 and for operating as a guest 
> becomes available.    Where spinning up an instance can and should be a 
> whole lot easier and faster; more competitive.  Spin up a cluster member 
> for running backups or whatever.  Or for dealing with a surprise 
> increase in loads, whether due to a data center failure and fail-over 
> elsewhere in your organization, or due to unexpectedly-increased app 
> loads secondary to any number of potential reasons.  Right now, 
> over-provisioning is often seen as easier than adapting to a changing 
> load, and cheaper than (for instance) clustering.  But how long is that 
> approach going to remain competitive?  For some folks with small 
> seasonal variations, probably quite a while.  For other folks with wider 
> variations in app activities or with the expectation of app or server or 
> site fail-overs or whatever, maybe they get interested?   It's really 
> quite nice to spin up an instance or a dozen instances for (for 
> instance) software testing, too.
> 
> Pricing aside — and OpenVMS Alpha diverges from past practices here, and 
> diverges in the right direction — cluster rolling upgrades and 
> clustering are still a powerful construct for end-users and for 
> developers.  This gets back to making details such as the DLM and 
> deployments easier to use, as well as other enhancements that've been 
> mentioned in various threads.
> 
> I'm here ignoring the HPE iCAP support, as that capability hasn't seemed 
> particularly popular among folks.  
> http://h41379.www4.hpe.com/openvms/journal/v13/troubleshooting_icap.html
> 
> Collecting telemetry — opt-in, etc — would help VSI figure some of this 
> out, too.
> 
> 

I agree that some things that make system management and monitoring would be a 
good thing.

I've got solar panels, and the inverters include a crude web server.  I can 
connect with a browser and sit there and watch the energy I'm generating in real 
time, and non-real time reporting.  A nice concept.  VMS doing similar is also a 
nice concept.

But, when talking about being able to "spin up" additional resources on demand, 
I have to ask first, what is the problem, and what type and amount of resources 
should be thrown at the problem.

All I have to go on is my own experiences.  None of our ustomers are running a 
cluster.  It's been discussed, as has SANs, and the customers don't see the need 
considering the cost.

Running on a single low end VMS system is about as cheap as one can get.  Not 
sure that cloud services would be any cheaper.

So, define the problem.  Am I the 1% who would not benefit, or am I the 99% who 
would sooner see the resources used for other problems?  It just seems to me 
that asking for something without seeing the demand isn't the way to address things.


-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc.      E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
Vanderbilt, PA  15486