[Info-vax] OpenVMS servers and clusters as a cloud service

[DaveFroble]

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2018-01-11 05:20:02 +0000, DaveFroble said:
> 
>> In our applications, we have a message manager, and all background 
>> tasks get their assignments through the message manager.  When we want 
>> them down, we just send a command to the message manager, and it 
>> directs all active background tasks to shut down gracefully.  Rather 
>> simple.  Works very well.
>>
>> Even if some of the things you mention were available, application 
>> designers would still have to figure out how to use them, and to 
>> implement that usage.
> 
> No, your approach does not work well.

Well, gee Steve, some of this stuff has been working, WELL, since the 1970s. 
Started on RSTS/E.  So, how long does something need to work, WELL, before it 
meets your approval?

>  Sure, it works.  It certainly 
> works for your particular current needs.   Well enough.   Now 
> ponder....  That approach also means different piles of different source 
> code that gets repeated differently all over the place, in every app on 
> the box.  Or maybe that your current approach or other approaches might 
> miss cases or events that are relevant, but that don't arise often.  
> (Attempts at DT are great at finding those odd cases, too!)    Or that 
> app-specific code increasingly doesn't get implemented, and long-running 
> jobs have to be restarted.   Or ponder that the source code gets 
> implemented completely differently, with different commands and 
> different syntax and different tools and different designs and different 
> requirements in different files manually entered in different places in 
> different ways by different folks with absolutely no consistent (and we 
> all know that some folks believe that "reading the manual is admitting 
> defeat"), with no repeatability and no modularity around installations 
> and removals and upgrades and patches, and with yet more work required 
> around any integration with the inevitable and eventual requirements for 
> better automation and replication of our apps.   With the likelihood of 
> unexpected conflicts arising when there are requirements for apps to 
> cohabit on a server.  To many ways that this all goes wrong, and with 
> increasing efforts inevitably involved.  Or folks just look at all the 
> OpenVMS complexity and roll-your-own requirements and the 
> piles-of-glue-code needed here and think to themselves: "I'll use Linux, 
> because $(reasons)".

Developers follow rules, or, they don't work here.  So last century, huh?

> TL;DR: Getting OpenVMS loaded onto an arbitrary server and booted and 
> getting software packages loaded and running on that server — whether 
> that's all on your own servers or on hosted servers or as guests or 
> whatever — desperately needs to get easier.

Getting easier, I'll agree with.

-- 
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