[Info-vax] VSI software

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2020-08-05 18:57:13 +0000, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply said:

> In article <rgeqbv$i7j$1 at dont-email.me>, Stephen Hoffman 
> <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes:
> 
>>>> The VSI licensing info has been posted once or twice within the recent 
>>>> hobbyist-related threads, too.
>>> 
>>> I think that the details of the license itself are clear.
>> 
>> We're here, with you asking these questions, so the clarity of the 
>> available VSI materials is debateable.
> 
> Not the terms of the license per se, but whether the community license 
> allows everything which a commercial license allows, and also which  
> versions are supported/warranted in mixed clusters.

You're here. You're asking these questions. You cannot find answers. 
You've searched. There are issues with clarity and/or availability of 
the existing materials. Q.E.D.

Having just taken a look at the existing OpenVMS Alpha V8.4-2L2 
documentation, the requirements around rolling upgrades are thin. Among 
what is available, "VSI recommends that all Alpha computers in a 
cluster run the same (preferably the latest) version of the OpenVMS 
Alpha operating system, and that all Integrity servers run the same 
version of the OpenVMS Integrity operating system."

Given V9.0 first beta is in limited availability and the second beta 
and the production release aren't available until 2021 or 2022, gaps in 
the available information for those releases are to be expected.

And licensing has ~bupkis to do with what upgrades are considered 
supported for upgrades, and for rolling upgrades. And upgrade 
configurations and paths for V9.2 are (were?) what you were asking 
about.

And given your existing mixed V7.3-2 and V8.4 environment and its 
issues and/or corruptions, I'd be hesitant to add the V9.1 beta into 
the mix. If that's where you're headed. And I'd likely start over with 
OpenVMS Alpha V8.4-2L1 (EV56 and earlier) or V8.4-2L2 (EV6 and later) 
and then V9.2 on both Alpha and x86-64 as that becomes available. 
You've previously mentioned you're not interested in intermediate 
upgrades and such prior to V9.2 and x86-64 port, though I'd tend to get 
everything to OpenVMS Alpha V8.4-2L1 (EV56 and older) and/or V8.4-2L2 
(EV6 and later) at your convenience. Because the VSI releases will be 
the oldest that can mix with the x86-64 port.

I've been assuming that support for Alpha systems with processors prior 
to EV6 will be omitted from the upcoming OpenVMS Alpha releases 
(V8.4-2L2 requires EV6 or later), but I don't know if that's been 
announced by VSI.

-- 
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