[Info-vax] WHY IS VSI REQUIRING A HYPERVISOR FOR X86 OPENVMS?

[Andrew Brehm]

On 21/12/2020 02:03, Michael C wrote:
> On Sunday, December 20, 2020 at 1:00:41 PM UTC-5, ajb... at gmail.com wrote:
>> On 18/12/2020 17:41, supers... at gmail.com wrote:
>>> This adds more cost. Why can't it run by itself on x86?
>>> Or am I misunderstanding that you do not have to buy vmware or some other
>>> VM to run it?
>>
>> But I also don't see your point. In my experience bare metal
>> requirements cost more money because you need to buy and support/install
>> extra hardware for the platform. With a hypervisor you can just add
>> OpenVMS instances on your existing hardware.
>>
>> Where I work every bare metal server is a hassle. VMs deploy
>> automatically and there is no need to worry about the hardware. If the
>> hardware fails, VMs are moved to or restarted on different hardware. An
>> actual hypervisor _requirement_ would be perfect for us as it would cut
>> down on support costs and time.
> 
> 1ST PROBLEM - RESTARTED
> 
> THERE ARE CUSTOMERS, MOST I WOULD THINK, WHO WANT 24/7 UPTIME THAT OPENVMS
> OFFERS AND NOT THE REBOOT MINDSET OF WINDOZE AND LINUS USERS.

And you believe restarting a bare metal OpenVMS instance on another 
server after a hardware failure would somehow solve that problem?

With vSphere you can move a running OpenVMS instance to another physical 
server in case you notice the hardware problem coming. With a bare metal 
instance you are limited to the situation you seem to think is a 
particular problem of using a hypervisor.

>>
>> But OpenVMS will, so they say, support both some HPE and Dell hardware
>> and some hypervisors, and all the supported hypervisors are available as
>> free editions as well as paid.
>>
>> While VirtualBox is not a production environment VMM, both KVM and
>> vSphere are and all three can be free.
>>
>> You can then install OpenVMS on your HPE hardware or install a free ESXi
>> on it or a free Linux with KVM and then OpenVMS. Where's the problem?
>>
> 
> DOWNTIME ABOVE WAS THE FIRST.

The above was a win for the hypervisor. A bare metal instance would not 
survive hardware failure, a VM can.

> 2ND PROBLEM - JOINING THE LINUX PATCH OF THE DAY CLUB
> 
> HERE IS THE OPENVMS CERT COUNTS AS OF 2018 COMPARE THEM WITH OTHER OSs - SEE THE PROBLEM?

No, I don't see the problem. How would Linux patches affect OpenVMS 
running in a virtualised environment?

I'm not sure you understand virtualisation correctly.

-- 
Andrew Brehm