[Info-vax] VMware

[clair.grant@vmssoftware.com]

On Sunday, December 8, 2019 at 5:21:22 PM UTC-5, Hans Bachner wrote:
> clair.grant at vmssoftware.com schrieb am 08.12.2019 um 21:28:
> > On Sunday, December 8, 2019 at 3:07:00 PM UTC-5, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> >> On 12/8/2019 1:34 PM, Grant Taylor wrote:
> >>> On 12/8/19 10:52 AM, clair.grant at vmssoftware.com wrote:
> >>>> Yes, I am booting VMS as a Fusion guest. We don't get very far yet but
> >>>> we will eventually get VMS up and running.
> >>>
> >>> How much difference is there between VMware Fusion and Oracle
> >>> VirtualBox?  My experience is that the two systems are quite similar,
> >>> save for some minor supported hardware differences.  I.e. which video
> >>> chipset or SCSI chipset or network card each emulates.
> >>>
> >>> Is VMware Fusion enough different from Oracle's VirtualBox to be
> >>> significant for OpeVMS?  Or is it that you're current work efforts are
> >>> using VMware Fusion?
> >>
> >> I would assume the end goal would be to support VMWare ESXi and
> >> that VMWare Fusion is just a step towards that.
> >>
> >> VMWare ESXi support would be important for many customers.
> >>
> >> Arne
> > 
> > Yes, the goal is production environments. Fusion is a convenient debugging environment. We will likely try the PC version as well.
> 
> Clair,
> 
> thanks for the excellent news that VMware apparently not only climbed up 
> on your priority stack, but you succeeded with some initial steps to get 
> VMS booting in VMware Fusion.
> 
> While Fusion certainly is an interesting option for developers (both 
> OpenVMS and applications), VMware Workstation will be interesting for 
> other developers, but for production use there's only ESXi which will 
> get consideration from your customers (in the VMware world).
> 
> Keep the good news coming...
> 
> Best regards,
> Hans.

I guess I need to set something straight. VMware has always been at the top of our list but the VMware folks wouldn't give us the time of day. Now they are talking to us. That is why we started working with Fusion. We need them to officially support VMS as a guest OS. That takes a business agreement between the two companies which now seems a possibility. There was no sign of that until a couple weeks ago.

ESX is obviously the goal. Anything else just gives us easier ways to get a sense of how much work it will take to get there.